Samsung cup main tournament starts.

[Christos]

My heart wants Na Hyun to win! A 1P in such a big tournament? That only happens in Anime! Go go Na Hyun!

[tapir]

My heart wants Na Hyun to win! A 1P in such a big tournament? That only happens in Anime! Go go Na Hyun!

Or to Han Sanghoon.

[oren]

Or to Han Sanghoon.

Thanks. I was trying to remember his name for a while.

[trout]

Round of 16 started.

Lee Changho vs Gu Li
Park Younghun vs Guo Wenchao
Lee Youngkku vs Tan Xiao
Kim Junghyun vs Chen Yaoe
Lee SeDol vs Kong Jie
Won Sungjin vs Li Xuanhao
Kim Jiseok vs Li Zhe
Na Hyun vs Peng Liyao

[John Fairbairn]

How did they get 8 Koreans playing 8 Chinese? A sponsor's fix? This smells.

[hyperpape]

The round of 32 is done as a double elimination with players in pods of 4, after which players are placed in a 16 player bracket. I thought that the bracket is pre-determined so it has to be filled after the round of 32, and that it's pretty common for sponsors to avoid placing players from the same country against each other in these situations. But you generally know more about these tournaments than I do, so I'll turn the question around: what do you think smells about the situation?

[John Fairbairn]

what do you think smells about the situation?

It's common to avoid certain match-ups early in tournaments - not just same nationality, but also blood-related players, and Nihon Ki-in/Kansai Ki-in, etc. This is usually not for presentational reasons but to avoid collusion.

But late in the event, with fewer bodies, it is more dubious. It becomes presentational and/or some fans are cheated. The event should hope to find the best player against any opposition. Go eugenics is not the way to do that. Imagine if the last 16 had evolved into 7 Koreans, 8 Chinese and 1 supposedly weak Japanese. If the draw is fixed, all those players not drawn against the Japanese would probably feel aggrieved. I think fans would blench, too. If the sponsors want a Korea-China match they can organise that instead.

If the idea is to try to guarantee a certain proportion of the prize money staying with Korean players, that can be solved with higher domestic fees. But foreign players already have a tougher time in many events given that the number of places reserved for domestic players is usually high. The balancing factor is that each country does it. If draw-fixing becomes accepted in one international event, you can be sure that other countries who feel hard done by will follow suit, and the whole of international go becomes tainted.

It may be chance the draw turned out this way, but as that is so unlikely, I'd expect a statement. Anyone seen one?

(Just in case anyone is not familiar with the names: it's not a case of getting 16 players of whom 8 are Korean and 8 Chinese, which is fine; it's a case of eight games featuring a Korean versus a Chinese).

[Kirby]

...
It may be chance the draw turned out this way, but as that is so unlikely, I'd expect a statement. Anyone seen one?
...

Anything is feasible if you believe in it enough. Even if the draw is fixed (which is speculation), intended to make matches that are diverse by country, is that so bad?

Even if the event is to "find the best player", you've stated that events sometimes avoid pairing people from the same country, even to avoid collusion.

The only real distinction that you point out here is that you feel that the current pairing seems to be more "presentational". Where is the concrete difference between a normal event where pairings are made splitting up those by country, and the speculation that there is some sort of "smelly play" going on here?

[hyperpape]

Thinking about it, I would not feel comfortable if matches were fixed by hand, but I would be comfortable with an automated procedure to maximize inter-country play.

I don't quite see how that would disadvantage foreign players if the average strength is equal (this seems to be roughly true for China/Korea).

[John Fairbairn]

Anything is feasible if you believe in it enough. Even if the draw is fixed (which is speculation), intended to make matches that are diverse by country, is that so bad?

Even if the event is to "find the best player", you've stated that events sometimes avoid pairing people from the same country, even to avoid collusion.

The only real distinction that you point out here is that you feel that the current pairing seems to be more "presentational". Where is the concrete difference between a normal event where pairings are made splitting up those by country, and the speculation that there is some sort of "smelly play" going on here?

I know the Samsung is Korean and that brings out a certain protectiveness in you, but objections to my objection seem so daft that I'm not prepared to say any more, except to suggest you look forward to the 100 metres in the London 2012 Oylympics in which all the balck guys from Jamaica etc are put in one semi-final heat and all the white guys from another, just so we can have rainbow diversity in the final.

(I don't mind being an Aunt Sally, but don't object if I throw coconuts back)

[Kirby]

Anything is feasible if you believe in it enough. Even if the draw is fixed (which is speculation), intended to make matches that are diverse by country, is that so bad?

Even if the event is to "find the best player", you've stated that events sometimes avoid pairing people from the same country, even to avoid collusion.

The only real distinction that you point out here is that you feel that the current pairing seems to be more "presentational". Where is the concrete difference between a normal event where pairings are made splitting up those by country, and the speculation that there is some sort of "smelly play" going on here?

I know the Samsung is Korean and that brings out a certain protectiveness in you, but objections to my objection seem so daft that I'm not prepared to say any more, except to suggest you look forward to the 100 metres in the London 2012 Oylympics in which all the balck guys from Jamaica etc are put in one semi-final heat and all the white guys from another, just so we can have rainbow diversity in the final.

(I don't mind being an Aunt Sally, but don't object if I throw coconuts back)

Well, all I can say is that you are the one that claimed to have facts behind your opinions. You told me that you back up your opinions with sources, and I'd like to point out that this is a just another example of a time where that is not true.

You are the one that called out "smelly play", but your response is evidence that you don't really have any logical basis for coming to this conclusion - at least not one that you've shared so far.

By the way, saying that a topic regarding Korean "brings out a certain protectiveness" in me is no different than if I say that Korean topics "bring out a certain aggressiveness" in you, so I'm not sure if delving into those types of scarecrow arguments is that beneficial.

[Laman]

How did they get 8 Koreans playing 8 Chinese? A sponsor's fix? This smells.

i like tournaments as fair as possible, but this looks ok to me. first, for Chinese it sucks to have to travel to Korea to play another Chinese, lose the game and return home. second, having a random draw is not more fair because everyone would have the pairing same difficult, it is only more fair because everyone has the same chance to get an easy (unfair) pairing

i think i would be content even if organisers went step further and pair players from winners brackets against players from losers brackets (supposedly protect players that already showed better results) or used national rankings and tried sort of fold pairing - pair strongest Korean against weakest Chinese, 2nd best against 2nd worst and so on (with Japanese players included, it would be more difficult but there would be surely some algorithm to achieve something close)

suggest you look forward to the 100 metres in the London 2012 Oylympics in which all the balck guys from Jamaica etc are put in one semi-final heat and all the white guys from another, just so we can have rainbow diversity in the final.

i don't really understand this. current Samsung is the exact opposite, strictly mixing Koreans against Chinese, only thing common is that neither solution is random

[John Fairbairn]

Well, all I can say is that you are the one that claimed to have facts behind your opinions.

This is a prime example of why I get irritated. I made no such claim here. I asked two questions and added a statement that further indicated I was questioning, viz. "How did they get 8 Koreans playing 8 Chinese? A sponsor's fix? This smells."

Likewise:

You are the one that called out "smelly play", but your response is evidence that you don't really have any logical basis for coming to this conclusion

I did not use the quote "smelly play" (which is meaningless to me incidentally - maybe smelly means something different to Americans, just like "mean"), and I didn't come to any conclusion. That was the point of the questions. I'm suspicious, that's all. That's what "this smells" means. It's fishy. If there is a stale kipper at the bottom of this, then I'll be disappointed because I'd prefer to see tournaments pre-arranged as little as possible, especially when a world title is at stake.

Your attachment to Korea is well known. My equally well known dislike of Mickey Mouse time limits is no more than a dislike of Mickey Mouse time limits wherever they occur. It is you who have tried to paint me as anti-Korean because of this opinion. You should be ashamed.

[Fredrik]

I doubt the paring was fixed. At (http://gogameguru.com/16th-samsung-cup- ... concludes/) we can see that the parings was made through lottery with the players present. Or it might have been so that Korean players can only draw Chinese, we have no clue however if that is the case, the players were probably informed about it.

However, if we want to try and find logical explanations for this I guess the key lies in the group system. Normally the winner of an group can only be paried against a "second" from another group. This might have narrowed down the different outcomes of the paring which made the Korea vs China match possible from a statistic point of view.

Even if it was fixed*, I would not mind at all. I think the beauty with international events competition between countries as those games are rare to see and the players feel more pressure, which in return leads to more exciting games. (The rivarly between Gu Li and Lee Sedol is in particular exciting.)

Additionally, if the Samsung Cup had some devious plans to support the Korean players with this paring, they are probably doing a big mistake. They are facing a huge risk as it could be possible that all Chinese participants knock-out the Koreans. Especially, Korea can lose two of their top players as Lee Sedol face Kong Jie and Lee Changho face Gu Li. The proper way to fix this kind of paring would in my opinion be that Lee Sedol played a Korean instead and that Kong Jie played Gu Li to knock one of them out

Perhaps I should contact Samsung and ask if they are in need for a devious schemer?

(Would just like to add a cliffnote. Even though I personally wouldn't mind if Samsung Cup had made some "forced parings" in this case I can understand John's concern about fixing in general. It might be possible to make parings great beneficial to the country you are rooting for. The next step might be, "Oh Kong Jies best player but his winning percentage vs Park Younghoon is just 35%, lets pair them together." In this sense, it's best that all competitions constantly is kept fair. Lets hope this was the case with Samsung

[trout]

The pairing was done by draw as you can see in the link below.

http://www.cyberoro.com/news/news_view. ... e=&cmt_n=0

There is no fixing to match up any specific players.

Organizer have Korean player draw from odd numbers and rest of players draw from even numbers. I can see this in the picture.

This is to draw more excitement.