Sorry old boy, but you have descended into ambiguity again. Are you saying that because distinguishing is difficult, the referee should take an easy way and simply quote an unclear rule and get on with life?

Beyond that, in this particular case, it is not at all clear why you think the situation is difficult? It may be that there circumstances that make it unclear, e.g. the player who punched their clock was in severe time trouble. However, absent such easily distinguished cases, why would the referee presume that a player deliberately intended to pass in the middle of the game? Actually, the case as stated by Javaness2 is that player A clearly hit the button by accident. Thus the intention vs. accident issue is not even on the table.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

A number of ways:
1 - Their opponent can clarify that they passed with them verbally.
2 - Their opponent can call the referee to clarify this. (This may lead to 1.)
3 - One can ignore their unclear action and play on, in which case the opponent may protest if he did not intend to pass. (This may lead to 1 or 2.)

A player not following the rules, can always be sanctioned.

_________________
North Lecale

By having an IQ over 70?

1) I do not remember what the intention was during the writing of that rule.

2) "position" is a term for board position.

3) The rule does not explicitly mention disturbance of playing material in general.



No.



I do not interpret rules with the intention of pretending an interpretation I do not see in them, in particular not for a side aim such as getting more or fewer problems. (It is unclear whether there would be more or fewer. You guess fewer but other guesses are possible.)



There would be other problems. How often do you want players to call a referee per game to enforce their opponents' proper passes with properly announcing "pass"? Maybe we avoid one problem but we get others! Things are not as simple as you paint.



I would have no problem with always saying "pass" but I expect many others to make big fuss about having to say "pass". Can you convince them to also always say "pass"? "pass", not "Finished?". In English, not in Japanese.



Sure. See above.



The problem is not abuse but refusal.



Convince all players, change their practice. I have no problem with such a rules change for myself as a player. As a referee, currently I would be scared by many complaints about opponents not always saying pass and not always doing so properly

This would be quite a ridiculous fear.
The change would be a simple improvement in the game mechanics. The number of people who would actually abuse the 'pass problem' I describe is very small. It is probably about the same number of people who 'abuse' the pass rule change I propose. Nevertheless, the principle is important, people should not win games by cheating. They should not win games by abuse of the rules. This brings the game into disrepute. The EGF should correct the rule, or correct the interpretation of the rule.

_________________
North Lecale

One cannot deny existing ambiguity.



No. I am saying that a referee must apply the rules, regardless of whether the player behaviour is ambiguous. Where the rules do not provide a solution, the referee must not take an easy way but a way as close to the rules as possible.

No, I am not complaining about an unclear rule. In fact, the cited rules are clear.



It is not the task of a referee to make assumptions about (im)perfect play. §7.1: "[...] In particular, no attempt should be made to use positional judgement in reaching a decision [...]" Go is a game where it is the player's right to make mistakes; this is a key excitement of the game. If all players were perfect Gods, then the game would be boring.



The description was. "Quite by accident, a player [A] presses the move button, he was fumbling for the look button." What Javaness2 describes as "accident" "for the look button" is only A's perspective. What everybody else present including the opponent saw was A's "fumbling" and "pressing of the move button". The referee must not believe A more than B or witnesses; he must believe A and B equally much, where facts are not unambiguous. Javaness2 describes B's perspective: "His opponent [B] now says 'You have passed', and plays a stone, and presses his clock." So B's perspective is that A established facts rather than having an accident. The referee does not have witnesses in this case. So he can rely only the objectively available facts. They are that A's pressing of the move button could have been either intentional or accidental; it cannot be established which of the two. Regardless of an IQ higher than 70. Impartial decisions do not mean to believe A more than B.

"in the middle of the game" is invented by you. From Javaness2's description, we do not know whether it was during the middle of the game or during the likely end of the game.

If there were the rule that a player must announce "pass"...

(In some tournaments, there are tournament-specific rules to do so. Some rules of play can specify so. So the previous discussion was in a context where neither was given.)

This case is analogous to one, where a player accidentally drops a stone on the board. [A] should immediately admit his error and offer to correct it. If he does not, I would be inclined to let the game continue. If he does, and [B] refuses, [B] should be calling the referee. As he didn't, both would get a warning, choice 3. Here I assume that no prior incidents happened in the game.

This is an interesting approach to the problem, thank you! Immediately (within a few seconds) admitting his action of pressing the move button as being accidental is a good condition for considering it, as you suggest, analogous to accidentally disturbing the [board] position.

The aspect of immediate admitting does not occur in Javaness2's dispute description, where the order is: first B notices that something happened, then B moved, then (supposedly not immediately after his action) A argues about it having been accidental.

Even then a player about to lose on time could press the button and immediately say it was a mistake and that way buy himself another byo-yomi period (atleast). I agree with Matti that there is no difference between accidentally pressing the clock and accidentally placing a stone where one did not want to place it. It's impossible to create safety nets in the rules for these accidents. Most players will see that their opponent made an unintentional mistake and allow them to take it back, and no dispute arises. The current rule for passing can't be abused. It can only cause dispute if an accident occurs. This means some will suffer for mistakes they make, which is much better than suffering for another player's abuse of a rule.

This situation is not purely theoretical, it happened to me at the WMSG. I did not insist my opponent had passed.

Good for you (and him/her)! But is this little anecdote of yours supposed to support or undermine any claim made in this discussion?

A novel and shocking approach -- using communication with other human beings to try to determine intent!

Not particularly, just that mistakes happen and normal (?!) human beings solve them easily rather than creating rule disputes out of them.

Of course there are many differences. The most natural is that in ordinary parts of play (more than 5 or 6 moves pre-dame), it is clear to all observers that a pass is an insane move. In contrast, many (though not all) accidental moves are difficult to distinguish from poorly thought out intended moves.

====

I increasingly think that the only way to fix the rules is to include a clause that "in edge cases, the referee shall use his or her discretion to achieve good results, and shall under no circumstances allow rule-lawyering trolls to gain any advantage."

One might object that this makes the rules unclear. Rather, I would say that the current rules are exceptionally unclear. Unless you have engaged in a detailed study of the existing rules, there is essentially no way to know that some existing unclarity in the rules will end up rewarding the trolls.

This should not prevent us from trying to make the rules more clear, so that the referees' judgment is not called upon so often. But unless someone has definitive grounds for believing that some set of rules is adequate without this clause, it's needed.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Consider the example of the FIDE Laws of Chess (italics added):
"PREFACE
The Laws of Chess cannot cover all possible situations that may arise during a game, nor can they regulate all administrative questions. Where cases are not precisely regulated by an Article of the Laws, it should be possible to reach a correct decision by studying analogous situations which are discussed in the Laws. The Laws assume that arbiters have the necessary competence, sound judgement and absolute objectivity. Too detailed a rule might deprive the arbiter of his freedom of judgement and thus prevent him from finding the solution to a problem dictated by fairness, logic and special factors. FIDE appeals to all chess players and federations to accept this view."

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

It is not like there would not be related tournament rules in Go.

The situation as stated -- accidental button press and prompt response -- is resolvable by a referee with common sense who is granted the power to make a judgment call. In this specific case, there should be some way for the rules to permit the "correct" outcome (A did not pass). But there can easily be more ambiguous situations.

Suppose that A presses his button without placing a stone on the board, then B thinks for a long time before responding with a move, then A objects that he did not mean to pass. Now there are several plausible scenarios, and it might be reasonable for the referee to rule that A did indeed pass, no matter which scenario really occurred:

1) A hit the button accidentally and was still thinking about his move without noticing the clock;
2) A mistakenly thought he had played and deliberately hit the button to complete his move;
3) A intended to pass (maybe late endgame), then changed his mind when he saw B move;
4) A was running out of time and wanted to buy time with a rules dispute.

I agree that requiring a player to say "pass" would eliminate most of these situations, but that does not seem enforceable in practice. If a player punches his clock without saying "pass" or placing a stone, would a referee really want to be forced to call that a rule violation and forfeit the game?

By the way, while we are discussing perverse situations and rules, what happens if a player places a stone on the board while his opponent's clock is ticking? Perhaps his opponent has made his move (placed a stone on the board) but forgot to punch the clock.

By the rules player B is perfectly within his rights to interpret player A's action as a pass. Player A's action clearly benefited himself since time was being counted against player B's time. Now, if it was an obvious unintentional mistake in player B's eyes, it may be advisable for player B to offer the "undo" to player A. This would be more important during the beginning of the tournament, because our psychology usually won't let a person take what he perceives as an ill gain without penalizing him later.



In this case, I don't see a reason to cry foul. Once the stone is placed on the board it can not be legally moved so in a sense the first player has made his move. By playing the next stone the second player has benefited the first player by limiting the first player's loss of time. I must add that the second move should be made after the first player has retracted his hand from the board. I could see a situation where a player could be disruptive by not giving the first player a moment to punch the clock. This sort of act is an intentional foul.

Perhaps we should stop using clocks that require you to push a button to see the opponent's time?