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 Post subject: Yoda's ban?
Post #1 Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2022 6:26 am 
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There are some mysterious comments in yesterday's AGA e-journal:

Quote:
The Power Report: Yoda suspended by the Nihon Ki-in; Most wins; Best winning streaks; Winning streaks recently ended; Retirements
Nov 17, 2022 10:34 am | Chris Garlock

By John Power, Japan Correspondent for the E-Journal

Yoda suspended by the Nihon Ki-in

This is not a matter one wants to get involved in, the reason being that, with the paucity of information available, it’s not possible for an outsider to make any meaningful judgment, but I can give some details. My report on the Masters Cup published on August 23, 2019, gives the bare bones of the dispute. More details are given in my report of February 22, 2020. The Nihon Ki-in board of directors suspended Yoda from play for six months. At the time, he missed some games, but when Yoda launched a legal appeal against the ruling, making the matter sub judice, the Nihon Ki-in reinstalled him until the court case was finished. The court gave its decision on October 14 and found in favor of the Nihon Ki-in, which announced that Yoda had been suspended for six months, from October 15 to March 16 next year. When he turned up at the Ki-in to play a game the next day, a director blocked his way to the playing room and he was informed in person of the ban. Yoda had won a seat in the Samsung Cup in the Japanese domestic qualifying tournament, but had to give this up. Nakamura Sumire was selected to replace him.


I found the earlier articles:
AGA e-journal of 2019-08-24 wrote:
Cho Chikun wins Masters Cup: The final of the 9th Fumakira Masters Cup was held at the Nihon Ki-in on July 20. Taking black, Cho Chikun, Hon. Meijin, defeated Komatsu Hideki 9P by resignation after 149 moves. Cho won this title for the fourth time and Komatsu failed in his first final. This is Cho’s 75th title. First prize is 5,000,000 yen (about $45,000).

That’s the go side of it. At the awards ceremony, a representative of Fumakira announced that it was discontinuing its sponsorship. According to a comment later posted on the Nihon Ki-in’s home page, Kobayashi Satoru 9P, Chairman of the Board of Directors, commented that Fumakira had objected to some tweets made by Yoda Norimoto, who forfeited his semifinal to Komatsu, which they felt blemished the tournament. Kobayashi concluded by saying that the board would examine the question of how to deal with Yoda.

That’s all the information given out officially. A Net search did not turn up much supplementary information. Briefly, Yoda’s tweets apparently criticized the new board of directors created after a recent election. On being criticized in turn, Yoda apologized and deleted the tweets. There is no indication about their contents. There are a couple of blogs that discussed the problem, but they don’t give a coherent story. Perhaps this just reflects go’s lack of popularity compared to shogi.

AGA e-journal of 2020-02-23 wrote:
Yoda suspended for six months

The mills of the Nihon Ki-in grind slowly; whether or not they grind fine is another matter, but they have caught up with Yoda Norimoto. In the E-Journal issue of August 23 last year, I reported that the sponsors of the Masters Cup had cancelled it because of distaste for criticism Yoda was making of the Ki-in administration in tweets and via the Ki-in’s mailing list. When the medium was criticized as inappropriate, Yoda withdrew his tweets, but did not apologize to the persons who felt they had been libeled. Kobayashi Satoru 9P, chairman of the board of directors, said at the time that in due course Yoda would be punished for disturbing and defaming the Nihon Ki-in and causing it to lose a sponsor. On February 12, the Ki-in announced that a board of directors meeting had decided that he would be suspended from tournament participation for six months (from this day to August 11). The decision was announced at a press conference attended by Kobayashi and Obuchi Morito 9P, a director. They said the decision had been transmitted to Yoda through his lawyer. The next day, Yoda turned up to play a previously scheduled game, but was denied access to the playing room. It’s hard to get a full picture, but Yoda’s criticism was said to be related to the dismissal in May 2018 of his wife Hara Sachiko 4P as a director for—what else?–slandering other candidates in an election, though the timeline doesn’t seem to match.

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Post #2 Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:38 pm 
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Yoda had a game scheduled on 20th February in the Kisei B league and lost by default. His next scheduled game is on 20th March. If it is a 6 month suspension it is to be expected that this game will also be lost by default. It is certainly an interesting approach if he plays in the round robin league but is disallowed to compete in two or three out of seven games. There is some fairness in letting him compete instead of relegating him without competition, not that I know if there is a rule about how many games it is allowed to default like this before being disallowed from completing the rest of the games, on the other hand it also affects the result of his opponents.

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 Post subject: Re: Yoda's ban?
Post #3 Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 9:35 am 
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Yoda broke what must be the cardinal rule of professional go players: don't endanger the gravy train. All professionals depends on sponsors. Alienating a sponsor means endangering their livelihood.

I can't imagine there will be much sympathy for him.

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 Post subject: Re: Yoda's ban?
Post #4 Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 1:07 pm 
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pwaldron wrote:
Yoda broke what must be the cardinal rule of professional go players: don't endanger the gravy train. All professionals depends on sponsors. Alienating a sponsor means endangering their livelihood.

I can't imagine there will be much sympathy for him.


Huh? He criticised the 日本棋院 not the sponsor

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 Post subject: Re: Yoda's ban?
Post #5 Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2023 10:51 am 
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It looks like his suspension ended briefly after the previous messages.

He played on 20th March in the Kisei B league against Hane Naoki and won an interesting game that went into endgame early. The game was always within a margin of komi either way if we allow for a small margin of error ;-) At one point (move 167) the computer wanted Hane to go for complications at the cost of lot of points, it evaluates W+8.4 but then 11.8 and 14.1 when playing out the first moves of the variation, the percentages are better though I doubt there is much difference in this context (it may confuse the computer but probably not Yoda). Still it's always a question if your opponent is more likely to make a mistake in a critical situation or play sloppy when it's not critical. The game ended when white resigned, a rudimentary count and the computer gave W+4.5 but likely to be a bit closer.



Yoda is back with a vengeance!

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 Post subject: Re: Yoda's ban?
Post #6 Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2023 8:18 am 
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Elom0 wrote:
Huh? He criticised the 日本棋院 not the sponsor

That seems to be the case from my memory of the rumors discussed here and on Reddit. It's pretty unfortunate really, because it seems like the loss is not directly related to his poor decision (my opinion) to tweet publicly.

Still, would a suspension not be appropriate for (presumably) bypassing the official complaint channels? Presumably he (and his wife?) already complained and were shut down. Maybe Yoda thought he was in a strong enough position to give an "F U" to the Kiin and hold his ground. But it seems like he miscalculated.

Even if he is back, I bet the other players are not happy with the loss of a sponsor, for whatever reason.

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