Haha, the internet connection where pro AGA. Seems there is still a way to beat Surma.

An absolute joke if they end up giving the win to the AGA...

They have referees in the live locations with the players to check for cheating, so they do know if it was won due to playing too late, or due to connection.
Mateusz said in chat that he played with 10 seconds left..

You simply can not put a rule in that says that players are responsible for their connections, as players can get the best connection possible, but the KGS servers connection can still randomly disconnect and/or lag players in different regions easily. It is simply beyond the control of players to make sure they always have a good connection to KGS, as KGS also needs to maintain a good route to them...


Only a few moves left and Mateusz was winning with what, 10 points?

On a rather other rathering interesting point, Ali Jabarin said on the stream that something like (he couldnt remember exactly) 10-20% of winnings would go the players winning, and the rest split evenly between all the players in the EGF team. Apparantly they used a random method for choosing the first player. Both Ali and Mateusz wanted to be first, Ali won, but couldnt play the first game due to scheduling conflicts, so Mateusz got to start. (This info from the stream, as i remember it, might have understood something incorrectly)


EDIT: For those that didnt watch the game. Only a few moves left in the game, Mateusz Surma was winning by roughly 10 when he timed out from KGS. He said he played the move with 10 seconds left.

Yes, that would be a joke. What if it´s the deciding game? If a connection would end it. In that case a internet competition is no option in the future.

No on-site professional go tournament would let one player lose on time if there are outside circumstances beyond his control that make it impossible for the player to play his move.
Fire alarms, earth quakes, mechanical or electrical failure of clocks, power outages etc etc. do not cause the player whos turn it is to loose on time.

If it can be confirmed that the move was indeed played with 10 seconds left (or in time in general), then it really shouldnt be seen as a loss.
Play should just be continued from the last correct position, specially if this doesnt affect the integrity of the result.

Eric Lui seemed also to be unlucky, he resigned, after Mateusz lost of the disconnection. If the disconnection counts as a result, it would make him also unhappy, a victory like that would always look like cheating and he don´t want to recognized as a cheater.

Cheating is the wrong word. An undeserved or possibly unsporting (but even that's a stretch IMO) win for Eric, but cheating means breaking rules and Eric didn't do that.

https://transatlanticgo.org/ no oficial result yet seven hours later, and I see nowhere else something to confirm that Eric resigned.

Maybe the teams are discussing with the referees. Connection problems may arise again in the future, so they need to be clear about how to deal with these kinds of issues.

Yeah, I was surprised about that, but still being the top player in the UK is quite an accomplishment.

Sad to see my fortune telling powers were correct:



I hope the rules of the tournament were explicit about effects of lag in internet play, rather than them making it up after the event. If they are, as is often case, "lag is responsibility of the player" then Eric winning is following the tournament rules. However, those rules do give the AGA players an advantage as they are nearer the KGS server in the USA. I believe Mateusz was playing this game in Kazan, Russia on a not-particularly-good connection. Given that I think his decision to go into his final byo-yomi period and play moves even 10 seconds from the end was unwise from a meta-gaming perspective.

Don't worry. The referee team is from Europe.

That the decision making process is impartial.

Anyway, here's the game

I understand what you're saying, but i disagree about the 10 seconds being too close.
They are playing with a 1 minute byo. In case a player can not comfortably play at the 10 second mark, then that is a rather huge handicap to the player.
It is not something the player should have to think about, specially since this is one of the biggest "money tournaments" in the EGF & AGA.

In case a player can not comfortably play within the rules (play at even 1 second left), then perhaps byo-yomi time control is the wrong choise for the tournament.

They take a lot of time, making their decision, or did I miss it?

A loss by time, especially when the one who runs out of time is ahead on the board, is pretty unsatisfying for everybody. A loss by lag, when you actually tried to play the move before running out of time is even worse. I don't know what the official rules are for this tournament, but if lag wasn't included as a condition in the original rules, it's a sticky situation.

The most satisfactory result is if they just finished the game to counting, without any sort of timeout. I guess second best would be if the person timing out were behind when they ran out of time. Then awarding the win to the person ahead on the board seems a little bit more natural, since the person was ahead, and the person that timed out lost by the technicality of time controls.

But here, technically speaking, white won by time. But it doesn't necessarily feel right, since they were basically finished with the game, and black was ahead on points. So maybe we should say that black won.

But that's also not 100% satisfactory, because this sets a precedent for future matches. What happens if a player lags out at move 100? How about move 30? Do we use Leela or something to see who was ahead, and give the win to that player? Should they do a rematch? Or do we give the win to a player if Leela has win percentage greater than X%?

It's a very tricky situation, and I'm glad that I'm not the TD. I hope they had something that explained what to do in case of lag, but I suspect that they might not have - it's somewhat of a weird situation that was probably difficult to foresee.

_________________
be immersed

A possible rule concerning internet lag:

1. Suppose player1 clicks before the end of the countdown, but the server doesn't register it because of internet lag.

1.a. If player2 wants to resign, then player1 wins by resignation.
1.b. If player2 wants to resume the game then both players get (say) 5 periods of 30 seconds byo-yomi. Player 2 gets extra main time if he wasn't yet in byo-yomi.
1.c. Otherwise, player2 wins by time.

2. Resuming the game like in 1.b. can be done at most once during a game.

This is unfortunate on so many levels. Both players have compelling arguments to make in their favor:

Eric:
- It wasn't Eric's fault that his opponent timed out.
- His opponent was in his final byo-yomi period, and Eric had every right to keep playing in hopes Mateusz would make a mistake. (to those that have a problem with this, do you also have a problem with "preparing to resign" in the middle game?)

Mateusz:
- Mateusz was ahead, and would have won if things played out normally.
- As far I know, he is very well liked and has never been a part of controversy before this.

There is no universally satisfying solution, but I think a rematch would be a fair compromise.

In the KGS Chat and in the Twitch Chat it where mentioned, that Eric resigned. Maybe someone misunderstood something, but it heared like that.

Sometimes it´s a decision of estimeate something. A rule could be, that a Jury has for example 3 Options and estimate it, according to Position, Facts and what the Players got to say. I think it´s the best Option, cause, there are things, that will never be really clear.