In Japan’s Go society, when you view the old games, you would see it’s especially hard for White to win. There was no Komi at the time. So players may choose to make some bold moves, sometimes not optimal but risky, to confuse their opponents. If that succeeds, white would suddenly have advantages. On the there hand, the black side knew the great advantages and may perform relatively conservative. Hence, it’s not totally without chance. However, players’ skills are involving. When AI comes out, the standard layout was largely determined. Some players can even remember near 100 optimal movers at the beginning, making a much harder to catch up when a few points behind. For a professional player, 2-point sometimes represents a great success of a local battle. When you see AI analysis, 2-point usually means the probability of winning would change like 30%. Current professional players have incredible strong skills and sometimes over 50% optimal moves in the whole match. Every single point matters so much.
Maybe Milly Cup sponsor is envying all the buzz (and indeed advertising) that the LG cup sponsor got.
I’m not sure if LG Cup sponsor is enjoying it… This may very well lead to a boycott of LG by the Chinese
I didn’t say the rule was stupid, although it is. I said Ke Jie’s mistake was stupid. Similar to a pro playing self atari on a big group of stones. As you said, he had many chances to stop being stupid and he kept doing it.
No, not that close. My very very basic Spanish allows me to understand significantly more Italian than my hopefully pretty OK German allows me to understand Swedish.
Thanks for clarifying
and @shinuito I see my attempt at being sarcastic failed (edit: is it rhetorically? or sarcastically if I want to express the opposite, and hidden meaning behind the words, I always forget). I didn’t know everyone was all being so literal. If anyone read all my paragraphs instead of just one sentence, I am just saying that someone often looks at the historical records and sees many records claiming to witness or be certain about certain truths and facts, and later other original 1st hand materials surface or unearthed change it completely. If we all sit here seeing 2nd hands recordings and being sure about it, that is we believe the media that provide them, but the actual 1st hand evidence are not accessible to us. Imagine the next generation who had hard time or no access to the recording at all (like how many still have VHS players, how many have film rolling playing machines, etc. as medium progresses, less and less of the original recordins will be accessible), by that time, all they can rely on are the copied of the original in their more advanced medium, thus never be able to be sure how many edits had been done. Doing this enough time, only those copies originally widespread or had “reproducing value” either through entertainment value or other means survived. (history has a very limited memory as we often say, only so many condensed records got passed on when the culture and original system got replaced or disappeared)
As we see on Wikipedia editing history the score was constantly being changed back and forth from 0-1 to 2-1, regardless of the truth I or any of us think and know, the last and widely edited version will be the one in the future see. I don’t argue the truth as it is now, but as what those in the future might see. And as someone who love history research, I am on the side that we should keep records of all if possible. Say imagine if all the records of Ke Jie objections, and the CWA objections and the 0-1 edit got lost, and in the future we lost this information, and later on we see a serious reaction between CWA and KBA, or even worse, how can they in the future to know the original cause and the events that happened, they would just see suddenly an event happened without context (this had happened to so many historical events, hence bothered so many historical researches that only rely on opinions instead of historical clues). This is more in line with the fact has one kind, but in order to understand the context we need to preserve the opinions of everyone at the time or we risk losing the ability to understand the context and doom to repeat the same mistakes.
First of all, I think Nie was just emphasizing the strength difference between current top players is very close, and a few points of difference can decide the result (when we see even in the first game the final scoring was just won by 2.5 points, and a lot more others just by 0.5)
As to the second question about before komi. First of all, ancient players often believed that there were strength differences between players hence one side is often stronger than the other, and thus the stronger player played second (later on more consistently as playing white). And in ancient Japan, a system called teai (手合) was evolved to change who should play which color next. In one game a player lost as white when their strength is very close, it is not enough evidence as weaker, hence the next game they exchanged colors and played. Then if the player won as black, they would exchange colors again, but if they lost, they continue to play as black. Over a series of games of playing using teai, the records would show who had won more to determine who was the better player.
But this custom is not very rigorous and how many games are enough and winning by how many games in comparison is enough? The time Honinbo House was established in the late 17th century, the teai system had become a system of fixed teai, that is if the players wanted to make sure to find out who was better, they would did so via a series of sogo (爭棋), set at 20 games, and a predefined set of playing black and white based on their current strength (dan rank) determine this teai sequence. If players are of the same rank, they switch colors after each round (black white black white, etc.). If players had one rank difference, they switched every two rounds (B W B B W B, etc.) And for the difference of 2 ranks, the weaker player always played as black. For 3 ranks, they would add another handicap stone, hence (2 handi, B, 2 handi, B,). And this continued till one side constantly played as in 3 handicaps (those below this difference didn’t have the right to challenge or play in officially recorded games). And in this series of games, if one side won more than 6 games in total (like resulted in 9 wins 3 loses, 4 in adraw at round 16), the side that won more would get bumped up in teai sequence. (got to play as one rank up). When a player sufficiently beat enough players and got recognized by enough strong players, they would get official recognition as actually one rank up from their previous rank (but this often involved the Great Houses politics as to whether ranking a player up, even if they knew the player was stronger).
This ranking and teai system had been in place all the way up to the early 20th century before players started to feel the strength difference between players was too wide, and get more refined teai (instead of two ranks per one stone difference, it became three ranks per one stone). This new test of strength system called Oteai (大手合) was implemented throughout the 20th century all the way to the early 21st century when komi Go was common and used officially.
You mentioned black box and political works in the background, here is a video sort of on the conspiracy side of things.
Sounds too conspiratorial, but we do know there is political power in play (and KBA does have financial problems after the budget cut and solely relied on corporate sponsors), and the referee’s action even from his interview sounds very “predetermined”, like evading the question as to why he decided to come in at the time, and stating it is done immediately which contradicting existing recordings we see, as well as the claim that a translator cannot be found on the spot which the Chinese translator was just right there in the view of the live stream. And if later on materials behind closed doors are leaked (like in the Lee Sedol court documents), and we know KBA had records of doing very fishing things interfering with players, bribing them, etc., then this might get blown up way out of proportion.
Are we expecting other official responses at this point?
It is so close to the Chinese Lunar New Year, and officials in KBA have already expressed that an official meeting will be held after that. As to more CWA’s responses, we don’t know. Right now, it seems up to the corporate sponsors in China to react, and some of them already did.
Likely most things will be more clear after the Lunar New Year, when the next title tournament is about to begin with Ke Jie as one of the players.
Lol the conspiracy he is talking about sounds interesting, but if the Koreans did that to try to save their face, why didn’t they do it in Samsung Cup when the rule was already in place? Also, even if they really planned for it, previously there weren’t any case of players losing by forfeit, did they really think that China will accept it if Ke Jie suddenly lose because of this rule in the finals? If at least if some players already lost by forfeit because of this rule before (I only know Jin Yucheng got the penalty once in Korean Baduk League) then maybe everyone will be more prepared, but if you only start being serious about this rule in the LG Cup Finals, most likely people will start saying things and China will retaliate. Now there are already rumors that China will not invite Korea for the Chinese Weiqi League, and other China compeitions may follow suit too. Is it really the result that they wanted? If the person who planned this didn’t expect this result then I would say it was a very bad foresight on his part. Also lastly, who is this guy talking??
From his conspiracy theory (I think he said in this video or the previous one), that the Samsung cup was already dominated by Chinese players, so maybe it would be too obvious (and potentially politically dangerous), if the remaining Korean player continuously got promoted through top 8, top 4 to champion all by win with forfeit. Also, the last one left in the top 8 was Shin jinseo, they might just have every confidence in him. And Samsung cup was the first one to adopt the new rule, so there will be no new rule to use before that, and there were players who got penalized for misplacing captures, and didn’t happen again and the penalty was not enough to flip the game (just saying according to the conspiracy framework, they tried but not enough, but this time is the very last chance to use it). I am not buying it actually, but I do think the referee was under some kind of political pressure from the corporations behind KBA, and their actions might not actually be for the benefit of the corporation, but the opposite, to scold them, like a mutual destruction to force them out of KBA (and the meeting of the next pro associations might actually be their “real battlefield”).
BTW, the new CWA announcement is out, so not a rumor anymore.
Oh I saw that and I thought that’s just a memo to each team and not an official statement or announcement
CWA is not technically the official organization (but half a private organization) so I don’t think they have the power to force others, but only suggestions, the real official power in the Chinese Go community is 中國棋院, if they make an announcement that will be really serious and fully polical from the very top. As to the decision of the corporations, it is really hard to say, but as they say we will be sure the day after tomorrow (1/27).
Oh my god I always thought 中國棋院 and 中國圍棋協會 are the same organization
中國圍棋協會 was more or less pros elected and managed, but 中國棋院 was officially appointed by the government with the chairman all have high political roles in the CCP party, and not necessarily pros.
@Sadaharu
BTW, 劉世振 is the 上海局棋牌運動管理中心 chairman, where every branch of them is the shadow organization of the 中國棋院 (they manage the day-to-day task, where the political stuff handled by 中國棋院). So if he said so, it is very close to the official stand. Hence, the likelihood that everyone got the message, and the corporations’ reactions predictably followed suit (I would be surprised if they didn’t get the message, and “the leak” might not be accidental at all). But pros might not be following though, they might rebel, since teams do consist of pros and coaches who are also pros, and some have political pull, hence their reactions and the final decisions are still in the air before 1/27, if we see some pros stand out to voice their opinions we will have more clues.
I think it is also “interesting” that they said they are not inviting foreign players and didn’t specify Korea. Japan must be thinking why are they also caught in the fire though.
Also if Shin Jinseo’s team (forgot which team) loses the champion because there’s no Shin Jinseo, then I don’t know what to say… Park Junghwan also did pretty well last year.
This is why I think pros might rebel, but the corporations might comply. Pros know what would happen in the game, but corporations consider the political influence and fallout. Hence, hard to say the result.
And so close to the Lunar New Year, they are rushing something, which might be an indirect message to Korean associations and other associations. If they don’t make an announcement or react soon and fast (make your stand now), or face the potential fallout. Part of it might also be internal to force the hand of pros in the team to make their decision “wisely”, that they had to make statements that they only exclude Korean players but no others in their final decisions.
Overall, this is not going down the path of any quick or “nice” resolution.
That’s kind of hilarious, historically speaking.