Lee Sedol vs Western Pros

[hyperpape]

More or less what Bill said:

In poker tournaments there is a cutoff, where perhaps the top ten players receive some amount of money, with increasing prizes as you go from 10th to 1st. I believe it's called being "in the money" or "out of the money" once you know whether you place within that range. Was there some sort of prize if the Western pros could hold the match to less than 2 stones?

[emeraldemon]

The title "Western Pros Resign Jubango" makes it sound like the pros made the decision, not go9dan.com . If they were hoping to save face, it didn't work from my perspective. It makes it sound like they were afraid of losing at 3 stones, so they didn't want to try

[p2501]

Well at the start it sounded like they would pull through the 10 games regardless of the outcome.

[Polama]

The original announcement was that the US team would win $1,000 apiece if they were at black or better at the end of the series. Depending on how you interpret that condition, they were out of the money sometime between round 6 and 8.

"Out of the money" means that no matter how the last two games went, the American team couldn't win the cash prize. I don't know about Go, but it's pretty common in lots of competitions to end as soon as one competitor has no possible way of achieving victory: 5 game tournaments usually end at 3 wins, baseball games skip the last half inning if that team is already ahead.

Congrats to Lee Sedol, and good luck to the Western Pros in future events!

[Bill Spight]

I'm not familiar with the fine distictions in "money-talk" but for me it sounds like the western pros decided to not play further matches because it presents them - as fellow pros - in a very bad light. Taking a 3-stone-handicap while being in the same profession surely raises a lot of doubt whether they are not amateurs after all.

Taking three stones from a top player was not all that unusual back when pros took handicaps from other pros. Back in Dosaku's day, a shodan would expect to take 4 or 5 stones from the Meijin. He was said to have been so strong that he could have given them 6 or 7 stones.

These days shodans are stronger, but 9 dans are weaker. It would not be surprising if Lee Sedol could give 2 stones to some 9 dans.

[jts]

It seems to show something of a bad attitude/lack of seriousness. If playing with Lee Sedol is too embarrassing, how do they expect to get better?

[lemmata]

It seems to show something of a bad attitude/lack of seriousness. If playing with Lee Sedol is too embarrassing, how do they expect to get better?

That is unfair, don't you think? How do you know that they did not want to keep playing? I would be surprised if it was the western pros who wanted to stop. Let's not forget that Lee Sedol's schedule is heating up soon. He participates in both the Chinese and Korean leagues (requiring air travel), not to mention the main stages of various tournaments and the Chunlan Cup final in June. I am not sure there is anything Lee Sedol gains by continuing to play when 1) he is super busy and 2) he has already assessed the level of the western pros.

The series description itself only talked about handicap adjustments up to 2 stones. Even if the western pros won the next two games, they would only get to 2 stones, so they have already reached the highest handicap that was considered at the beginning of the match. It makes a lot more sense that the match was terminated as a courtesy to Lee Sedol, who is going to be very busy for the next few months.

I thought that the western pros did pretty well.

[jts]

You are absolutely right, it's unfair. I read more into the statement than I should have. It's curious that they carefully avoid saying outright who cancelled the series.

[skydyr]

You are absolutely right, it's unfair. I read more into the statement than I should have. It's curious that they carefully avoid saying outright who cancelled the series.

I imagine they were quite vague to try and keep anyone from looking bad due to specifics.

[Bantari]

You are absolutely right, it's unfair. I read more into the statement than I should have. It's curious that they carefully avoid saying outright who cancelled the series.

I imagine they were quite vague to try and keep anyone from looking bad due to specifics.

Methinks the only way somebody can look bad for making a decision is when its a bad decision.

[skydyr]

You are absolutely right, it's unfair. I read more into the statement than I should have. It's curious that they carefully avoid saying outright who cancelled the series.

I imagine they were quite vague to try and keep anyone from looking bad due to specifics.

Methinks the only way somebody can look bad for making a decision is when its a bad decision.

Well, if Lee Sedol is ending it because of his upcoming schedule, and they said so, it may look arrogant or dismissive of the western pros, for example. It's not a terrible reason, but to prevent that appearance, it may be left unstated. If you look at traditional multi-game matches, it was also pretty common to abandon them once a player was beaten down to handicap to prevent the losing player from looking even worse. Of course, if you come out and say that's why you stopped, it negates the whole reason for stopping.

[Bantari]

Methinks the only way somebody can look bad for making a decision is when its a bad decision.

Well, if Lee Sedol is ending it because of his upcoming schedule, and they said so, it may look arrogant or dismissive of the western pros, for example. It's not a terrible reason, but to prevent that appearance, it may be left unstated. If you look at traditional multi-game matches, it was also pretty common to abandon them once a player was beaten down to handicap to prevent the losing player from looking even worse. Of course, if you come out and say that's why you stopped, it negates the whole reason for stopping.

Scheduling issues can be prevented - this is what scheduling is all about. So if there is a conflict, somebody probably did not schedule properly.

The rest of what you say is about appearances only, and while I have to admit that appearances do matter, I do not consider such attitudes to be very professional nor really fair to the spectators.

Consider a marathon which gets stopped in the middle when it becomes clear that a certain person will win. Or a football game... or whatever. Most of such events are for spectators, and I personally would LOVE to see if the western pros could beat Lee Sedol at 3 handi. I am sure I am not the only one who feels like that.

Anyways - that's all moot. I hope we will learn the reasons.
But most of all - I hope we will see more of such matches. Was fascinating!

[Splatted]

I don't see the big deal about this. Yeah it would have been nice to see some 3 stone games, but how is this any different from resigning midgame once you know you can't win? It's the proper thing to do in order to avoid wasting your opponents time, especially among proffessionals who are there because it's there job not because they want to play. Even the idea of a proffessional stubbornly refusing to resign a hopeless position against the world champion just makes me cringe.

[hyperpape]

There have been a lot of professionals or other strong players who talk about the importance of high-pressure games where a championship is on the line. If everyone involved knows a game is just for show, then it can be hard to maintain competitive focus, and I wouldn't fault anyone for ending the series for that reason. I wish I could have seen the next set of games, but I also can't be mad.

You are absolutely right, it's unfair. I read more into the statement than I should have. It's curious that they carefully avoid saying outright who cancelled the series.

I imagine they were quite vague to try and keep anyone from looking bad due to specifics.

Methinks the only way somebody can look bad for making a decision is when its a bad decision.

Methinks you look bad for saying that. Now either you look bad for saying it, in which case it's presumably wrong, or it's possible to look bad for something that's really ok. Q.E.D.

P.S. I was with jts in thinking that the decision was initiated by the Western players. It's only after lemmata's post that I noticed it wasn't stated, or even implied.

[Bantari]

Methinks you look bad for saying that.

Why do you say that?
I can't see how anybody can look bad for making a good decision, that's all.
I mean - I really don't know, I just wonder. Why do you say that?