Again I’m reposting things I’ve read on facebook, which are awful to link to and find again but I read about this example of some controversy in endgame.
26th Japanese Kisei, title match #5
Ryu Shikun 7p (Black) vs. O Rissei 9p (White) W+R (5.5 komi)
The go4go link User account | Go4Go
and on OGS.
There’s discussion of the game here but I’ll highlight the main section in the link in case it dies or you don’t want to follow it: History of Topics 2002 | Nihon kiin
I think the TLDR is that things like filling dame are very vague in practice comparing to the official rules. Ryu lost 6 stones when not paying attention and that caused the dispute.
Disagreement mars conclusion of 5th Kisei game
Until the last two moves, the fifth game of the 26th Kisei title match, played at the Manseikaku Hotel by the side of Lake Toya in the town of Abuta, Hokkaido, on 20 and 21 February, was another relatively peaceful affair, without any large fighting. O Rissei won the game by resignation after 300 moves, but actually the result of the game was reversed during the playing of the final dame points.What happened was that at around 7:10 pm while the players were filling in the final dame points, O Rissei put a group of six stones into atari with move 298, but Ryu did not connect, playing 299 elsewhere. Ryu was clearly not paying close attention to the dame-filling moves because he thought that the game was over. On move 293 he had said: “It’s finished, isn’t it?”. However, O did not respond, so from his point of view the game was still in progress. After playing 299, Ryu realized that his stones were in atari and he made as if to replay his move, but at this point O said to him: “I haven’t said anything [i.e. that the game was over].” Ryu reacted with incomprehension. O repeated his comment and asked the game recorder to confirm that he hadn’t said anything. The game recorder was unable to confirm or deny this, so O asked for the referee to be called.
According to the rules and conditions of the Kisei tournament, any dispute during a title-match game is to be resolved by the game referee in consultation with representatives of the sponsor, the Yomiuri Newspaper, and the Nihon Ki-in. The referee was Ishida Yoshio, who with the Yomiuri Newspaper and Nihon Ki-in representatives, conferred for about an hour and also reviewed the videotape of the game.
When the game resumed, Ishida gave their ruling: according to the Nihon Ki-in official rules of go, a game continues until both players agree that it is over. The videotape gave no evidence that O had agreed the game was over, so his claim was accepted. O sought confirmation that it could therefore play; when this was given by Ishida, he captured the six stones. If the game had finished without incident, Ryu would have won by 3.5 points.
Ryu did not resignaiton immediately. After breathing out loudly three times, he asked Ishida a question [as soon as something like this happens, the game is considered suspended and the timekeeper stops the clock – Ryu was, as usual, in his final minute of byo-yomi]. His question concerned the question of whether he had replayed a move. When the game was first suspended, after Black 299, O commented that Ryu had already committed an infringement, replaying move 285. He said he hadn’t objected at the time, but his clear implication was that for that reason he was not going to permit a second infringement. Before he resigned, Ryu wanted Ishida to confirm whether or not he had replayed his move. Ishida said that he was unable to comment, as the camera angle on the video, from directly above the board, made it impossible to see. O then pointed out that he only referred to it while the game was suspended, that is, that he was not officially objecting. Actually, in both cases – the question of replaying a move and whether O agreed that the game was over – Ryu did not seem to be actually disputing O’s assertions. Rather, it seemed that he had been so caught up in the game that he was completely oblivious. O firmly maintained that Ryu had let go of his stone before replaying it.
If O had agreed with Ryu that the game was over, does that mean that he would not have had the right to capture the six stones? According to the rules, a game ends when the players pass in succession. However, according to the official commentary on the rules (see “The Go Player’s Almanac”, pages 178, 183 and 184), it seems that dame-filling moves and necessary reinforcements inside groups can be played either before or after the end of the game. In the latter case, the moves are not part of the game, i.e. “these are not moves as defined by the rules, and need not be played according to the rules”. This would seem to indicate that O wouldn’t have been allowed to capture the stones if he had agreed the game was over. In practice, players often agree that the game is over, then proceed to fill in the dame without anyone passing a move, so there is a gap between the Japanese rules and what actually happens in practice.
One can certainly say that under the traditional etiquette of go no one would capture stones in the dame-filling stage if both players had agreed the game was over. On the other hand, no one questioned O’s argument that if he had not stated the game was over then it was still in progress. (Just for the record, Ishida couldn’t even confirm from the videotape that Ryu himself had said that the game was over. O didn’t purposely ignore him: he says he didn’t hear him, which is reasonable if Ryu’s words were not audible on the video – quite apart from the fact that O has suffered from ringing in the ears and consequent hearing problems since 1998.
This problem arises from the stubborn Japanese resistance to counting dame-filling moves as part of the game. Although this is the first time that a problem has occurred in a title match, it’s long been one of the well-known hazards of Japanese go. One player announces the game is over; this puts the other player on the spot: he can still do something, but if he disagrees, that will be a poweerful hint to the first player to have another look at the board. The relevant World Amateur Go Championship rule states: “The players continue to play alternately until all the neutral points have been filled and all necessary defensive moves have been made.” If professionals adopted a rule like this, problems like this would never arise.
This makes an enormous difference to the title match. Ryu loses a game in which he had played well and instead of needing just one more win to take the Kisei title he is faced with a kadoban. There is a two-week break before the sixth game, scheduled to be played in the town of Oyama in Shizuoka Prefecture on 6 and 7 June. Will the break be long enough for Ryu to recover from the shock? One good sign is that Ryu himself has accepted responsibility for his slip, saying he regretted his carelessness and that he had already switched over to thinking about the sixth game.