EGF vs AGA pros win-and-continue match

[k0n0]

Both sides should accept the ruling with good grace and move on.

I agree. Players have sown the seed and they can play now.

Now it is our job to nourish disbelief, malevolence, hatred, to whip up tension and to start bloody hostilities.
Soon every man in the world will know what go is all about

[Bill Spight]

Referees decided naturally in the case of "four passes" where one player captured all opponent's stones in his own territory, and then claimed stones in opponent's territory were living stones.

Not to hijack this thread, but here is how I would have ruled on that case. (Hidden out of courtesy.)

quoting myself from SL:

I believe that my ruling as a director would have been different, given your plays after the second pass. The section about pauses states:

"18 Play pauses when each side passes once, making two consecutive pass plays. If there is disagreement about life and death, play can resume."

Since there was apparently no discussion about life and death during the pause, my prima facie reading would have been that there was no disagreement about life and death, and that play should not have resumed. So I would have declared all those subsequent plays invalid, and rolled the play back to the pause.

Also, even if you allow plays after the pause, players are not supposed to pass if there are neutral points that can safely be filled. The final passes were made with allegedly living stones having neutral points unfilled. So the final passes could have been declared invalid, to allow the allegedly neutral points to be filled. OC, in that case the supposedly living stones would have been captured.

Ing rules may be complicated and hard to understand, but Ing was a smart guy and worked on them for decades. He covered his bases pretty well.

[Bill Spight]

...
While I may not agree with Kim's decision, as I do not know what evidence and arguments he considered...

If what Surma knew or did not know is considered relevant, should we not hold Kim to the same standard?

Be my guest. Don't invite him to referee your next tournament, if you don't like his rulings.

[Kirby]

Now it is our job to nourish disbelief, malevolence, hatred, to whip up tension and to start bloody hostilities.
Soon every man in the world will know what go is all about

Ha!

I think we have a mission statement for L19!

[Uberdude]

A post from Hajin Lee:

I am one of the organizers of the Transatlantic Match, but this is NOT an official tournament statement. I am writing this with a heavy heart, as an individual Go player and a volunteer organizer.

I can't describe how hard this situation has become. I am shocked and horrified that some Go fans are making hateful messages/comments to some AGA pros, and I am sad that Mateusz lost his game due to something outside the game, that Myungwan's decision as a referee is not getting the respect it deserves, and that some fans consider this whole tournament has become a "joke".

I admit that we were very poorly prepared for this situation. We thought if internet connection is lost, the player would be able to reconnect and continue the game. We didn't discuss the possibility of this technical problem causing timeout. For this I really apologize as an organizer.

It took us over a week to come up with an official result, because the people involved were all over the globe, and we wanted to make sure everyone involved had a chance to speak out. As Mateusz explained, we had the first decision, but there was an appeal. We had the second decision, and we had an appeal again. The referee had to make the final call at this point. When the referee made the final decision, there was an appeal again. We discussed again, there were more consultations, and finally the referee didn't change the decision from there.

For the referee, his main goal was to "decide as other reputable professional tournaments would". Although we are nowhere close to the major professional tournaments level in terms of the budget or experience, he believed we should try to act like one. For this reason, he consulted other Go associations for their advice/experience, and then he also consulted people with a long experience of organizing major online Go tournaments with a big prize pool.

The reason why the decision changed every time was that each appeal came with new information. With the first appeal, he learned that Eric's proctor was not paying attention to Eric's moves because this part was not included in the proctor's written job description. The second appeal came with the information that Mateusz was aware of this technical issue from a previous game.

Personally I understand why Mateusz didn't report this issue to us. But, there were several things we could do to try to prevent this situation if we knew about this, and we couldn't do it because we had no clue.

Please please do not attack the AGA players. You can offer constructive feedback, but don't question their integrity or ethics. All they did was to ask the referee to reconsider the decision to continue the game. They each had decent reasons for the appeal, and all they wanted was to be heard of their opinions on this matter. I was once a professional player myself, and I do not believe making this appeal was in any way wrong. Suppose two professional players are playing in tournaments. One is clearly winning, but then presses the clock 1 second later than intended and lose on time. At this point, would you expect the other pro to resign because he/she was losing on the board? (this would be a noble act, but you can't blame one because they didn't make this choice)

Lastly, this tournament is being financed by the AGA and EGF without sponsors, with minimum budget. You probably all know that both organizations are non-profit and do not have much money like some other professional organizations. We have prize money (small for a professional standard), small payment for the commentators and proctors. That's it. All the organizers, like myself, are working on this event with absolutely no pay in our free time only because we love Go, we enjoying working with / for other Go players, and we believe this event can be exciting for the Western Go communities. In this environment, it's inevitable that you will find somethings missing and not quite up to the standard.

We are currently working on writing new rules that can cover this situation and potentially others. Thank you for your interests and support for this tournament, and I would really appreciate if you would be more understanding with what happened around the 4th game.

[Violence]

Oh, and welcome back to L19, Violence.

I'm not here for long, just popping in to give my two cents about a dumpster fire.

[Kirby]

This part matches the sentiment that I was trying to describe earlier:

Personally I understand why Mateusz didn't report this issue to us. But, there were several things we could do to try to prevent this situation if we knew about this, and we couldn't do it because we had no clue.

(From my earlier post):

My personal view is that maybe it’s a bit harsh to say the discussion is Mateusz’s responsibility to initiate. But it sure would have been a lot clearer if he had.

[jann]

Please please do not attack the AGA players. You can offer constructive feedback, but don't question their integrity or ethics. All they did was to ask the referee to reconsider the decision to continue the game.

There seems to be a HUGE gap in (un)sportsmanship between
1: continuing a lost game where only outside disturbance can change the result, and
2: actively protesting a referee decision that tries to mitigate such outside disturbances

[Bill Spight]

The whole thing seems to be a way to deflect responsibility for the debacle from the organisers with the insufficient rules to deal with a predictable problem of internet play onto one of the players.

Kim's final decision was akin to rulings made in other games and sports. I would not be surprised if he could point to similar rulings in professional go games. The onus on players is harsh for amateurs, but pro organizations hold their players to high standards. I would not be surprised if Kim cursed the organizers under his breath for dumping the netlag problem in his lap.

[Bill Spight]

A post from Hajin Lee:

I am one of the organizers of the Transatlantic Match, but this is NOT an official tournament statement. I am writing this with a heavy heart, as an individual Go player and a volunteer organizer.

I can't describe how hard this situation has become. I am shocked and horrified that some Go fans are making hateful messages/comments to some AGA pros, and I am sad that Mateusz lost his game due to something outside the game, that Myungwan's decision as a referee is not getting the respect it deserves, and that some fans consider this whole tournament has become a "joke".

I admit that we were very poorly prepared for this situation. We thought if internet connection is lost, the player would be able to reconnect and continue the game. We didn't discuss the possibility of this technical problem causing timeout. For this I really apologize as an organizer.

None of the organizers had played on KGS before? If a player is allowed to reconnect, that is quite reasonable. But nobody thought that would screw up the timing on KGS? Or that smaller netlag would also do that?

It took us over a week to come up with an official result, because the people involved were all over the globe, and we wanted to make sure everyone involved had a chance to speak out. As Mateusz explained, we had the first decision, but there was an appeal. We had the second decision, and we had an appeal again. The referee had to make the final call at this point. When the referee made the final decision, there was an appeal again. We discussed again, there were more consultations, and finally the referee didn't change the decision from there.

So it sounds like the appeals process was more complicated than previously indicated, but that the final arbiter was the referee.

For the referee, his main goal was to "decide as other reputable professional tournaments would". Although we are nowhere close to the major professional tournaments level in terms of the budget or experience, he believed we should try to act like one. For this reason, he consulted other Go associations for their advice/experience, and then he also consulted people with a long experience of organizing major online Go tournaments with a big prize pool.

In line with what I thought. Definitely giving the matter more than due consideration and in no way trying to whitewash the matter or absolve the organizers from their responsibility for this mess.

The reason why the decision changed every time was that each appeal came with new information.

As I said, the first job of the TD/referee is to ascertain what happened. More of an investigation should have been done from the start.

With the first appeal, he learned that Eric's proctor was not paying attention to Eric's moves because this part was not included in the proctor's written job description. The second appeal came with the information that Mateusz was aware of this technical issue from a previous game.

Personally I understand why Mateusz didn't report this issue to us. But, there were several things we could do to try to prevent this situation if we knew about this, and we couldn't do it because we had no clue.

Clueless. The organizers are not trying to escape responsibility. At least not Hajin Lee.

Please please do not attack the AGA players. You can offer constructive feedback, but don't question their integrity or ethics. All they did was to ask the referee to reconsider the decision to continue the game. They each had decent reasons for the appeal, and all they wanted was to be heard of their opinions on this matter. I was once a professional player myself, and I do not believe making this appeal was in any way wrong.

As a former bridge pro and a TD, I concur.

We are currently working on writing new rules that can cover this situation and potentially others.

Bravo!

[Bill Spight]

You want regulation and bureaucracy? Because this is how you get regulation and bureaucracy!

I like the traditional Chinese approach: a little bit Confucius, a little bit Lao Tze.

[dfan]

Post from Ali Jabarin (pro on the EGF team):

On the situation with the Transatlantic match:

Mateusz lagged out on a sure win against Eric Lui in the 4th round. The referees then took a lot of time and came to the decision to award the win to Eric and team AGA.

I want to address some of the frquent complaints/questions I saw many people have:

“Why have a serious tournament online?”
There have been talks about having this tournament ever since EGF and AGA started their professional systems about 5 years ago. For years the organizations were trying to come up with the funds to have this tournament live in Iceland, but there was never a budget to fly the players and staff over there and still have anything left over for decent prize money. So finally, after 5 years it was decided to do what can be done and have the tournament online.

"Why the delay?"
I think the reason they chose to delay until now was that both team leaders (Hajin and Natalia) EGF and AGA presidents (Martin and Andy) and even the players themselves were all meeting in China for the IMSA tournament (AGA vs EGF was today BTW ). so with such a chance to have everyone discuss it together in person, they decided to delay.

We also need to recognize that the organizers are mostly volunteers and even though it's just online, this tournament still took a lot of work by them and ultimately their goal is just to support the Go community, even if mistakes like not having extra-clear rules for lag situations were made we need to be encouraging the organizers to hold more and better tournaments, not flame them.

Naming&Shaming AGA pros or referees is pointless, I cant say I understand AGA players’ appeal but I do know them personally and they are not dishonorable people, every go player who saw a clock dispute in a tournament knows that sometimes irrational things are said/done.

As for the decision,I would have liked to see a rematch, or even having both players lose, not because I think it's the most fair or logical, but because it would keep the least amount of people frustrated with the situation.
as for the decision which was taken, I don't agree with it and think its unfair, if I was in Mateusz's place I would probably react much more angrily, but it's important we don't miss the big picture and destroy the tournament over this incident, that's why our team will most probably not counter-appeal this decision, there are also discussions on making it up for Mateusz in terms of prize money.

TL;DR:
In future years this could evolve to be Europe/America’s Nongshim cup (hopefully moved to live games by then) or we could destroy it now over freaking KGS lag…
Well played 4 games Mateusz, the team will take care of the rest.

[dsatkas]

I understand the reasons why the European team would reject the restart of the game. It would be nice to know the reasons behind the USA team rejecting resuming the game.

[k0n0]

I am one of the organizers of the Transatlantic Match, but this is NOT an official tournament statement. I am writing this with a heavy heart...

Thank you. It is good to hear more details from a point of view of an organizer.

you can skip the spoiler, it is a trash

It is hard to combine a serious text with a hateful one. So I removed this hateful part.
Ok, I didn't remove it completely. But there is nothing remarkable.
But let us continue our spiteful and bloody war, that will hopefully lead to a session of United Nations Security Council.
Now I would like to hear a standpoint of those filthy AGA players. (In fact I prefer they don't talk, because making these things clear might end our hostilities.)

The reason why the decision changed every time was that each appeal came with new information. With the first appeal, he learned that Eric's proctor was not paying attention to Eric's moves because this part was not included in the proctor's written job description.

Why did AGA players appeal? I can understand that in case it was Eric who had a lag problem then he wouldn't be so lucky like Mateusz, because Eric's proctor was not paying attention to Eric's moves. So theoretically Eric would be in disadvantage.

But in reality Eric had no lag problems, only Mateusz had them. The organizers didn't foresee this problem, they didn't create rules solving lags, and this one unique situation had to be solved. Fortunately the proctor noticed when Mateusz tried to play. So the game could be resumed without any suspicion that Mateusz cheated.
I don't see the role of Eric's proctor here.

In other words, if Myungwan was in train of creation of rules that should be valid in future, and those rules included "if the proctor wants and has spare time, he can check whether KGS lags", and proctors of AGA didn't want to do this job, then AGA would be in disavantage and I would understand why AGA would protest against such rules. But this is not our case.

_____________________________________________________
I am a volunteer kibitzer and I work in my free time.

[atarihuana]

i wonder why i thought go would be diffrent than football

terrible refs, playacting, anything to win. i lost intrest in this match. i think team egf should just not show up for the remaining matches.