C’mon, man...



Pro organizations can only have impact and prestige when they are held to high standard. We may think we are giving a second chance by being lenient to a cheater pro, but we actually reduce the value of the pro status of everyone else in the organization.

All of those folks spending 12 hours a week who didn’t make pro - and all of those who made it - are cheated because we now say that cheaters can be pros.

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A couple of other items that might not be clear:
1. The owner of KataGui was contacted about the potential cheating before Eunji admitted it. He noted that there was an entry in the DB of someone playing out Eunji and Lee Youngu's game, which matched the time of the game. It's unclear whether it was Eunji herself who was inputting the game, though.


2. Some folks are more upset about Eunji's confession letter than the actual incident. That's because some folks believe that she has cheated at least 3 times based on how exactly moves match up with KataGo in these matches. But in her apology letter, she kind of brushes it off and acts like she wasn't really thinking and didn't know that she was cheating. Some folks think she's lying directly.

While I advocate for Eunji's punishment, I don't know how much weight I put into #2. I think there's a good chance she's cheated at least 3 times, but I don't think that the analysis that was done on those games is necessarily conclusive.

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be immersed

Re 1 the Katagui record, unless there's some evidence it was her (like her IP address or account registered with her email) not one of the thousands of observers doing it that is irrelevant. When I am watching a live pro game these days I will often input the moves into Lizzie locally and follow along, exploring variations and using it to inform my kibitz. If I didn't have a powerful GPU I would use some online service like Katagui. So that could be a perfectly innocent explantation. This is yet another example of why you need control groups: did anyone check if Shin Jinseo's or any other prominent pro's games were in there at the same time as they were played. Maybe most pro games which are a featured broadcast have live Katagui records from interested kibitzers.

Re 2. If she is lying in the confession letter about the cheating, I think it's more likely that it was about the nature of it (that it wasn't the opportunistic copying from a commentary window opened, but planned by running her own bot and she could have done it multiple times) that she didn't cheat and falsely confessed to get a lighter punishment than if she was found guilty later even though truly innocent. False confessions are more likely, like in the US prison system, when it is well known that harsh punishments are near certain on conviction, but here we had talk of cleaning toilets and the KBA had already shown its dithering and potential preferential treatment of the future superstar.

Pro organisations or mere professional associations. You can certainly attribute prestige to the game of go and thus by proxy to its governing body... by itself they both remain inanimate objects though (funnily enough chess has had an elitism debate not long ago). That's why the prestige of professional associations/professions change over time. It's a human value, given by humans. And humans are fickle things. Needless to say, I don't think any pro go organisation necessarily has "prestige" and I don't hold them to a higher standard than my own professional association.

But yeah, for your feelings to remain intact it might be best to exclude cheaters from the pro organisation. Then again your feelings should not be the basis to another person's sentence. That's called bias.

Also, nobody in this thread is - per se - lenient to cheating pros as far as I can tell. There should be consequences. What a lot of people do is questioning whether the outcry for blood, sorry, immediate life-time-ban is proportional, adequate regarding future incidents or even justified given the "evidence" and negligence by the KBA in cheating matters.

As Ferran wrote, the problem could lie whether or not you're willing to see the matter in shades of gray rather than black and white.

Thirdly if you want to devalue all members of a trade because you experienced one black sheep, that is again on you. I guess in everyday life you won't do this for practical reasons but that double-standard-discussion probably has nothing to do with the matter at hand ; )

Chess has had a lot of GMs ("pros"), who were caught cheating. Even recently. I don't see the general image of a chess player to be in decline. I don't see chess as a game in decline, quite the opposite. But chess does a lot to prevent cheating and as John Fairbairn pointed out, chess also has zero-tolerance-policies in place: If you get caught with a cellphone in the playing area, you are out and possibly face a temporary ban.

So live and (let) learn.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I'm certainly no expert in oriental legal systems, and I don't believe anyone else here is either. But I do know their systems are different from ours in the UK, and I'm fairly sure they differ from the US. One big difference, I believe, is that defence counsel have less involvement in the initial stages of interrogation (which makes it a bit like the French prosecutorial system), and a lot of weight is put on eliciting confessions. Confessions obtained without the presence of defence counsel (and, I believe, often unsigned) thus carry far less weight in the minds of the public. I further believe the confession is often seen simply as a step in preserving social harmony - anything to avoid the adversarial systems typical of the west.

The present cheating case is not a legal case, of course. But I imagine that when people of any country set up organisations with rules, they inevitably reflect the legal system they live under. I would therefore expect a confession in this case to bear a different weight from that that would put on it by people from different countries.

There is an impression nowadays, especially among younger people, and I have no doubt the internet fuels this, that we all live now in a global village with the same systems, beliefs and mores everywhere. Poppycock.

IP address or email account use are only indicators but not evidence in themselves, even if the provider confirms registered data. Either might be hacked.

Also, there's no evidence that Kim Eunji exist.

Wrong. They are evidence. They are not incontrovertible proof. Little evidence is. Maybe you mistranslated to German in your head.

Btw, over on Facebook I asked about what crime the cheater in the pro test who got sentenced to jail for 1 year was convicted of. Kim Yoonyoung said it was 업무방해죄 aka obstruction of business.

http://koreanlii.or.kr/w/index.php/Obst ... f_business

I think it is more fully obstruction of business by fraudulent means, which I assume includes cheating. And since fraud is in the mix, ordinary amateur cheating as on KGS, say, would be exempt.

Reading that page I linked, it seems if I entered my name as "NULL" (thanks Mum and Dad!) into the Tygem registration page and their bad coding meant I crashed the server, then I might be guilty of a crime. Or even just entering my name as John instead of Andrew!

Everyone here is expressing their feelings on the topic. That’s why we’re having a discussion. Your opinion to allow cheaters who very likely lied in an “apology letter” is also biased.

What I believe to be objective is that, all other things being equal, an organization with no tolerance for cheaters, having no known cheaters (or liars) as members is more honorable than one that allows cheaters and liars to remain members.

As a result, I have less respect for the organization, now. And others will, too.

Like you said, our feelings here are irrelevant. We don’t make the decisions, and the damage has already been done. The only thing that would fix things would be for Kim Eunji to resign, herself. But given her actions so far, that’s probably not going to happen.

I’ll admit: now we live in a world with a less respectable pro organization. And I just have to get over it.

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be immersed

Yeah, their technology is crap, and the whole technical aspect of managing tournaments could be restructured to make things a lot better. I don’t believe that’s the core issue here (pretty sure Eunji can find ways to cheat whatever system they have), but I think this is an opportunity to fix this aspect of tournaments.

Side note: It’s speculation, I know, but Kim Eunji breezed through Yunguseng classes, but kinda got stuck at becoming a pro for awhile. Given recent events, it doesn’t seem inconsistent to me that she’s been cheating regularly, but had a hard time cheating to actually become pro. I have no proof of this, and the thought is totally biased and speculative. But I can’t avoid having that thought now, given her cheating history... Really lousy situation

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be immersed

I would split hairs by saying everyone here is expressing opinions and some are more influenced by emotions but, yes, we are all equally discussing here. Though my initial point was calling it biased when one is demanding a concrete verdict due one's feeling about the matter. I'm not demanding a concrete verdict. I'm for consequences as much as you are but the choice between nothing and life-time-ban has quite some nuances inbetween. Except for "nothing" they all speak towards no tolerance for cheaters because cheating will be punished. And here comes the intricate part: The actual sentence has to be tailored to the individual and its specific case. There is no one fits all approach.

I can even imagine cases to yell expelliarmus, too. I.e. if someone is planning to cheat (premeditated!) because they are betting on their own games to make extra cash. Though I'm not saying life-time-ban is the only choice here, since we don't know their motive yet. Life is complex.

And again for me this is not about Kim Eunji, cheating in go just had its first (known) pro case. I'm sure there will be others. You can't "fix" that unless you fix humans.

"Restoring honour" is - as the wording suggests - not meant to prepare for the future.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Actually Hong Seongji 9p used AI in casual online games (but on an account known to be him, on Fox perhaps), iirc suspiciouns were raised because he beat Ke Jie and other super top pros too many times in a row. He got off with a warning, and apparently the KBA made a rule that once a cheating suspicion is raised the player is suspended until the verdict. That wasn't applied in this Kim Eunji case, which is I think why various pros spoke out about the KBA's lack of action/consistency (not just the amateur in pro exam case).

https://xkcd.com/327/

Indeed...

Take care

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一碁一会

I don't think it's fair to blame me for being "influenced by emotions", if that's your implication, just because I have a different opinion than you. While it's true that I have passion for this topic, I feel that my opinion is based on evidence that I've researched, read, and heard from other people. Compared to folks who haven't read the various online Korean resources, I've probably in fact researched this topic more than the average guy in this discussion.

You may find my opinion to be "influenced by emotions", but I think the distinction is largely because my opinion is different than yours - not because I'm being less objective than you are.



I agree with you - there are nuances here. In some cases it might be appropriate to ban someone for a year or something. But I believe the appropriate choice of action in this particular case is to ban Eunji from being a pro.

The bottom line is that we both have visions for how we believe a pro association should act, and how it should be defined. My vision is different than yours. For example, you also seem to value following the example of chess organizations. That's fine, and I'm okay to have a different opinion than you.

But I take offense to the idea that this makes my view more emotional or less nuanced than your view, simply because it's different.

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be immersed

Kirby, did you consider the possibility than you expressed far more emotions and feelings than anyone else in this thread?


I'm not as passionate as you are so I may have missed some info. Based on the "facts" that
- she's 13
- she confessed to cheating a single time
- there is no evidence of premeditation
If you think that case deserves a definite ban, in which case would you consider a 1 year ban correct?

What with words? I don’t know how else to communicate on a forum.

Anyway, it seems that whatever I say here is gonna be construed as “biased” or “emotional”, so I’m done.

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be immersed

Kirby, I don't see any words in your posts that express emotions, and you are well-informed about the Korean go scene, which is very valuable. Your opinions are a bit extreme compared to other opinions expressed here, this doesn't make your opinion emotional or worthless.

However I found your comparison with In-Seong's treatment of cheating a bit strange. You only see the impact on the victims of cheating, and ignore completely the impact on the cheater.

You ignore the silent majority so I'll speak up like Uberdude did. I believe Robert would call this "meta discussion".

I observe a lot of emotions, perceived emotions and meta discussion these days. The other day someone wished I'd got Covid and no treatment, to suffer in hell, for what was a mere disagreement about the measures in our country.

Anyway, your points on this topic seem valid, if a little extreme. I concur with Uberdude there - but I'm not knowledgeable, neither on legal systems or the Korean go scene.