Last night, my time, Ke Jie was forfeited in game 2 of the LG cup final against Byun Sangil.

It seems like an unusual situation. The live broad cast is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7NnhFDf6e4

What unfolded was the following:

1. Ke Jie captured a stone early in the game and instead of putting it away in the lid, where it is supposed to be, he put it on the table and sort of behind the clock. This was the first stone captured in the game.

2. A few minutes later the referee arrived with some papers and stopped the clock and gave a two prisoner penalty to Ke Jie. Then the other referee came running with cover to put over the board. The game only resumed 30 minutes later after some conference.

3. Later Ke Jie captures the second stone of the game and he does the same thing and a few moves later he leaves the board. His opponent signals to the referees and the game is suspended in the same way as before when Ke Jie returns.

4. After more than 20 minutes of conference everyone leaves the room and two people come and take the players chairs away. Then some 30 minutes later everyone comes back and the referee makes the announcement that Byun Sangil is awarded the game point.

This seems very strict but the players do have an obvious responsibility for their captured stones. I have heard of lost stones (those are often found again just in time for counting) and I have seen people do what Ke Jie did, but if this was what usually happened (even if only in the LG cup) then I think there would be a long history of penalties and forfeited games. Has something similar happened many times before?

The penalties (2 points for first offence and instant forfeit for second offence) are a new rule introduced by the KBA on 8th November 2024. There's more discussion, and Korean-language sources (which I can't read), at https://forums.online-go.com/t/go-world-news/16961/817.

Something happened in the 3rd game too. I'm watching the broadcast after it finished. Ke Jie is not happy when they suspending the game and then they never come back. That must mean Byun Sangil is the champion.

There was a replay of the stones being misplaced. https://www.youtube.com/live/Y8gS6AqziCw?feature=shared&t=18832 The also posted the replay as its own video:



Honestly, how Ke Jie is putting the stones away on the table and even just pushing a stone off the side makes him liable to forfeit games in this way. Maybe this has been a common occurrence, for him and maybe some other players, but in his case it doesn't seem that yesterdays game was enough for him to take better care of the captures. For some reason he doesn't seem to have received the two point penalty before the forfeit, maybe there will be more information later.

What I heard is that in the final game, the referees noticed the violation on Byun's time and stopped the clock to discuss the violation, and Ke Jie objected to the fact that Byun would have unlimited time to think about the board position and refused to continue the game, or something like that. The video does show him failing to place a prisoner in the lid twice, though, so it's possible the refs were awarding a forfeit regardless.

Incidentally, this is a lot of money on the line to not be able to put your prisoners in the lid!

I've never watched any Chinese games. Do Chinese players ever put their captured stones in the lid? They don't need them for area scoring but they could do so if they are using a form of territory scoring to track the situation during the game. If they don't, is the new rule aimed at "cleaning up" the bad habits of those visitors to the Korean LG Cup? Might Ke Jie be expressing a more broadly held contempt for the new rule?

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Yes, they often do put them in the lid. I have seen this even when the lids are flat.

Putting them directly in the opponents bowl can be impractical when it is too far away if this requires stretching over the board and possibly physically blocking the opponent. Having stones lying around is more what people do when reviewing and this maybe doesn't have the appearance or atmosphere desired in serious competition.

It would require some sort of a survey to answer what the usual modes of captures storage are but putting the stones in the lid is definitely something very normal and something common.

There's no doubt that in my mind that Magnus Carlson's trousers are to blame here.
The fiefdom of officialdom trembles.

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North Lecale

This is just the type of thing that happens when new rules and regulations are summarily introduced without following international regulatory best practice (such as: consulting stakeholders on possible changes, understanding potential cultural barriers/issues, carrying out an impact assessment, making sure interventions/penalties are proportionate, trialing new rules before introducing them in a high profile environment).

Thinking about what was mentioned about new rules and how to introduce them I tried to find the rules on the KBA website.

I found rules of play with a clause about the captures being kept in the lid but this isn't something new. Using archive.org I found that this article has been in this rule section since it was first archived in 2020. There is also nothing mention about penalties. See https://web.archive.org/web/20200518234215/https://www.kbaduk.or.kr/baduk/rule/

Then I tried to find the official documents. They are at https://www.kbaduk.or.kr/bbs/read/basic/regulation/. The documents that look to me like they would be relevant haven't been updated recently but I downloaded some documents anyway. What I discovered is that there is something called Hangul Word Processor and I failed to convert the documents to something I could open.

I found what looks like the rules at https://baduk.or.kr/story/gameRule.asp and it matches the cited article 18 of chapter 4. The versions on archive.org seem skip the previous version from 2020 and only have the 2018 version: https://web.archive.org/web/20241008172253/https://baduk.or.kr/story/gameRule.asp

Using Google translate, if anything the 2024 edition appears to be more flexible than the 2018 edition. It adds a category of cautions, previously there were only warnings and fouls. Two cautions make one warning and a warning comes with a two point penalty. Two warnings then make one foul. A foul results in a loss of the game. The two point penalty also wasn't in the 2018 version.

This seems like a reasonable progression for interventions. The players are first, in case of small violations, instructed about what they are supposed to do and it is only more serious violations, including not following previous instructions, that result in a penalty that affects the game.

Failing to keep the captures in the lid is a warning in this scheme, a medium violation as it were.

I'm not sure I could agree that this is reminiscent of denimgate. The characters (including officials) in the Chess rapid and blitz world championship did appear to suffer from an extremely high degree of not caring what anyone else thinks. Maybe for Ke Jie it is not that, it is just that he becomes (for a lack of a better word) absent minded when he is in deep thought. Maybe this is more reminiscent of teasuji?