I am Korean, a Tygem 6-dan player, and currently an after-school Go instructor for elementary school students. I have seen the problematic scene from the third game between Ke Jie and Byun Sang-il, and I would like to share my opinion on why such a rule is necessary.

I teach Go to elementary school children aged 7 to 10, most of whom are encountering Go for the first time in their lives. In the very first lesson, before they play their first game, I teach them various Go etiquette rules and how to manage Go stones properly.

The stones must always be in one of the following three places:
1. Inside the Go bowl,
2. Precisely on the intersections of the Go board,
3. Captured stones must be placed inside the lid.

If they fail to follow any of these three rules, they are not observing proper Go etiquette. I tell them that if they do not follow these etiquette rules, their friends may not want to play Go with them in the future, and I will inform their parents about it. This is how I teach them proper Go manners.

Students who cannot or do not manage captured stones properly are not allowed to advance to the next level.

Most Korean Go enthusiasts manage stones in this way, so captured stone issues rarely arise in Korean Go games. However, I have heard that when playing face-to-face with Chinese players, captured stones are often neglected. In particular, Ke Jie’s act of placing the captured stone on the table instead of in the lid, as seen in the problematic scene, can be considered a breach of Go etiquette.

Over the past 30 years, the Korea Baduk Association has likely received countless reports of such incidents. In some cases, players may have even hidden captured stones during the game to interfere with their opponent’s counting, as mentioned earlier. Given this history, it is understandable that they wanted to establish a captured stone management rule, at least for tournaments held in Korea.

The Chinese Weiqi Association argues that the timing of the referee's intervention was advantageous for Byun Sang-il. However, considering that the game situation was already 98% in favor of White, Ke Jie’s claim appears unreasonable. If the game had been 98% in favor of Black, Ke Jie would have continued playing.

After this incident, the Chinese Weiqi Association seems to be turning Go into a political or money-driven game. In such cases, the side with more money and stronger political influence usually prevails.

I've barely followed the event itself, but I find the online reaction quirky. A mix of intriguing, entertaining and, sometimes, disgusting.

There's something I have to acknowledge. I've never been a fan, at all, of Ke Jie. I consider Go a 道, with the same limitations as Judo, sado (cha no yu), calligraphy... with more of an emphasis in the mental side of martial arts, but still a 道. I found Ke Jie's tantrums in the past, his lack of humility, and the way he was being coddled, extremely grating. He seems to have grown out of that stage. If he manages to keep this process, I'll begin to feel an interest. I'll certainly admit to being positively surprised.

This doesn't apply to the CWA. At all. They are the association that expelled Rui Naiwei (I could, also, point to a certain Go Seigen, of moderate fame). They have updated their methods, and they play to the gallery and the increasingly nationalistic side of modern Chinese sports and performative outrage social media. They have not updated their morals. In other martial arts or sports I know something like this could expel a whole national association off the sport for a few years. It would, at the very least, forbid the team managers from international events for quite a while. Maybe I'm spoiled. But I find it telling that a Chinese official did post something about it... and got silenced.

Rule disagreements have been a staple of competition Go for decades, if not centuries. Up to a certain point it's even healthy. This is a bull in a china shop (pun unintended, but welcome).

deungsan (kwan ja nim?) points that outside referees would be a better option. I agree, in principle, but Go does not have the equivalent of soccer's FIFA. It would take some work.

Take care.

_________________
一碁一会

The following is the sgf of the game (downloaded from http://www.go4go.net). This game has not been finished and some post above said it reached a critical juncture in which life and death of White sequence in the top right of the board had not been checked despite that AI favored White with 98% and 10 points ahead. In a sense, this sgf is a quiz of life and death of the top right White sequence.

deungsan, as you know Korean go stone etiquette so well, please tell us:

What happens when too many prisoners overflow a lid?

May a player inspect and count prisoners in his own lid and the opponent's lid?

Just ask refree an extra bowl and lid.

I have never had a situation of lid overflow in my entire go history. There were many cases where many dead stones resulted in capturing race, then the game ends with either side resign before taking out them from the board (the timing of resign is another etiquette)

In my class, the lid of bowl can hold about up to 50 stone. Next week (it is luna new years holidays now) I will show a bowl and lid used in my class.




During playing, I used to have a rough sense of how many dead stones were there on the lids, looking at the positions where stones removed and stones on the two lids, but, in case of sante, soon confused and lost sense of counting...

I believe players whose rank is higher than mine (tygem 6d) may have a better sense of how many dead stones are generated. I do not know how they manage to count dead stones.

In Europe, I have had, or witnessed, many close games with large captures or ko fights and overflowing lids, each of which can keep about 50 stones. Never was it necessary to call a referee to do the obvious of just placing prisoners besides the lids.

Much more often has it been necessary to fetch, or let kibitzes bring, additional bowls from nearby boards for extra stone supplies, although the typical bowl has ca. 180 stones.

In Europe, players can count stones in lids or arrange them on the table. Only very few would mentally keep track of numbers of prisoners, or their difference, removed from the board. It is unnecessary because counting is tolerated.

It is depreciated, if not illegal, to hide stones.

@deungsan

I respect your right to participate in this discussion. However, some of your arguments are so flawed that they hardly merit further debate. You claim that certain way of doing things are considered Go etiquette and that Ke Jie's deviation from it is in breach of that etiquette. It seems you are treating a local rule as if it were a universal standard.

Another thing that bothers me greatly is that this so-called rule is not applied universally or equally in all situations. In this recently taken photograph, four stones are clearly visible on the table. Why wasn't the white player penalized for this?

The video: https://www.youtube.com/live/AlrwjeHzDBs?t=6359s

White put black stones in the lid, a few stones slid out, he put them back immediately into the lid.

It seemed like someone above was interested in hearing a Korean perspective, so I joined this discussion.

As a Go instructor for elementary school after-school programs in Korea, I teach children who are learning Go for the first time about the etiquette they must follow. Part of this includes how to properly handle stones during a game. In the place where I live, children who do not observe these manners while learning Go will not be promoted in rank and will have difficulty participating in local Go tournaments. This is because children who disregard etiquette during games are often avoided by others, leading them to lose their Go friends and eventually end up playing alone. Since this essentially results in the child isolating themselves from the Go community, I call their parents and recommend that they stop learning Go—because they won’t be able to achieve the purpose of learning in the first place.
Behaving like Ke Jie did above (such as placing captured stones anywhere) is considered impolite here in Korea. A child who acts that way would not even be given the opportunity to participate in local tournaments.

These are points that Korean Go enthusiasts would generally agree on, but I never claimed that this perspective was universal. Please reread my post carefully.

2. If the captured-stone lid rule was not observed, ask the people who were responsible for overseeing it.

The follwoing image shows a bowl and lid. I put 50 stones in the black lid and 100 stones in the white lid on purpose. These lids and bowls are quite similar to those used in local tornaments.

Thanks for the video link! The White player (Mok Jinseok?) did the best he could in that situation. The key issue is that the lid is clearly too small to hold a large number of stones. Enforcing such a rule introduces ambiguity and relies on a third party (the referee) for interpretation, which crucially is not/should not be an inherently part of the game. Moreover, it contradicts the widely held belief that rules should be clear-cut and absolute (how many fans argue 'rules are rules' after the incident).

BTW, shortly after that moment in the video, the female player captured a stone, pressed the clock before placing the stone in the lib. Does that action also violate the existing rule?

Either you make rules which everyone can follow, or you don't and end up arguing about them.

_________________
North Lecale

The KBA has bowed to pressure from the CWA to the extent of softening the rule. Now, apparently, repeated violations of the rule will only result in further point penalties.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202502/1327786.shtml

I tend to find the analysis of what happened by kvasir and deungsan convincing: the rule is reasonable (given that it's sponsored by a Korean chaebol), the application of it in the third game is reasonable, and Byun's decisive advantage needs to be taken into account in interpreting the different parties' actions.

If Ke Jie wanted to make it a matter of principle he should have withdrawn from the tournament after the second game. Playing the final game hoping for a decisive win and then reproducing the same rules crisis from a losing position makes it look like a kind of mega-resign button.

Looks like the Chinese are so angry about this that they decided to boycott LG cup. At least that is how I understand the google translation of 'the Chinese team was absent from tournament': http://www.eweiqi.com/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=77&id=35917.

Also, is Ke Jie participating in any tournaments anymore?

go4go doesn't have any Ke Jie games since Jan 2025. And he doesn't show up in the Chinese ranking from gotoeveryone. So he is outside the top 30 this year? I don't know where he is in this list: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fUHmrNanjFjcsHyfTM-Zng, because it's an image and google translate doesn't work on it. So I can't tell what he is doing nowadays.

I also looked for his games since LG cup earlier and couldn't find any.

He is number 4 in that list from wechat but the column for the change in rating is blank. His rating is also 2689.8 on the list. This does round to 2690, which was his rating during the LG cup match.

All of this suggests that he didn't have games since February.

I found this article by chance:
https://sports.sina.com.cn/go/2025-05-12/doc-inewhhpk3262792.shtml

It doesn't say if Ke Jie has played since February but I might also just have missed that. However, it does say that he wasn't on the national team roaster in April and it gives some reasons why he might not want to participate in the training. It also says that he will be in the Chinese A League when it starts.

I guess the league is the litmus test on if he is playing competitively and the start date can't be very far in the future.