Better safe than sorry.



I sympathize. I do. IMO the netlag problem was known by the organizers and not his responsibility to report. But any net lag is, in terms of keeping an accurate record of time usage, an irregularity. Certainly a 3 second lag is significant.



Yes. I blame the organizers for using KGS to keep the time record.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

Although contrived, we can think of many irregularities in face to face play:

1. A player observes that his clock is rusty and when he pushes, it takes a few attempts to push through. It's mildly irritating but no big deal. This can happen in multiple games of one player, or across a few players. They may report the nuisance or not. At one point some player tries to push and the damn thing won't. Would he lose on time for failure to report on prior nuisance?
2. A player observes that the opponent is putting his stones not quite on the intersection. But from the logic of the game, the intention is pretty clear. Occasionally the player (subject) moves the opponent's stones a few inches to get them spot on. A nuisance but nothing worthy of reporting. Then the opponent claims his stone is actually on the adjacent intersection in a vital capturing race. The subject loses the capturing race, because he failed to report the earlier nuisance
3. A kid walks about the tournament hall and bumps into the table, twice. No harm done, just a nuisance. Then the third bump pushes a few stones off the table. The opponent claims they were never there. The subject loses, with aggravating argument that he didn't report the earlier nuisance.

Are these all cases of "better safe than sorry"? What would the organizers have done if the subject had reported the nuisance? Is the player observing any kind of nuisance fully responsible for the eventual result? And is an unobserving player protected from the loss by his lack of observance?

A good point is this:

IMO these examples are different, because there may be a remedy action taken by the organizers: the clock may be replaced, opponent asked to place stones better, a kid kicked out of the room.

Contrariwise, I don't think Mateusz could expect any real action which would prevent the 10-s lag.

So, there is a contradiction between

• the Mateusz's solution, which was naturally right, but formally questionable
• the (rather rigid) formalism of the referee

It is a useful lesson for Mateusz: in legal affairs and in go disputes, natural logic may be surpassed by formalism.

edit: I said "may be surpassed" intentionally. Referees decided naturally in the case of "four passes" where one player captured all opponent's stones in his own territory, and then claimed stones in opponent's territory were living stones.
Anyway I agree with Bill's "better safe than sorry".

In most legal systems, a case A vs. B where A complains about a decision and B does not, the result would be either to keep the decision or to change it to A's favour, not to change it to B's favour. In this case it was changed to B's favour.

Had Mateusz reported the lag earlier, a proactive decision could have been made. Perhaps they would have stated that in the event of a disconnection the game would be resumed, and/or that the proctor's job requires monitoring the times. I suspect that in that circumstance, there would be fewer recriminations.

The fact that I think the referee shouldn't have decided as he did is all the more reason that we should avoid creating a situation where the referee must decide after the fact.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

The action that could have happened would be a negotiated policy about what happens in the case of lag, before it was game deciding. It is MUCH easier to discuss some sort of lag policy before your decision is directly tied to a game result.

NOTE: Even though I've been playing the devil's advocate in this thread, I don't know for sure if it is 100% reasonable to expect Mateusz to be held accountable for his lack of reporting lag.

But I *do* believe that it may have been possible to come to a better solution, had this discussion happened as soon as Mateusz recognized that lag was a recurring problem. Now it can be argued that the lag that Mateusz encountered at the end of game 4 was an outlier, and more significant than the lag he encountered earlier. We have no data to really quantify this, so who really knows?

But the fact remains that it is much easier to discuss policy *before* a game has been played, because the final decision will seem much less biased.

_________________
it's be happy, not achieve happiness

You want regulation and bureaucracy? Because this is how you get regulation and bureaucracy!

I look forward to the next set of tournament rules codifying whether or not proctors should provide tea and shoulder massages to the players, and which sanctions should be applied if a player steals tea from them or makes weird noises during their massage.

Oh, and welcome back to L19, Violence.

I fully agree. Also I believe the organizers knew prior the tournament beginning that there were lags on internet. Still they did not declare any lag policy.
From Mateusz's side it was natural to expect they preferred to solve lags individually.

Firstly I would blame the organizers for missing tournament lag policy. Yes, I can blame also all 10 players that they didn't insist on it. They all knew about possible lags, not only Mateusz.

BTW, I am very curious whether any lag policy will be created before next game.

I don't think anybody would disagree with the "better safe than sorry" statement - it would have certainly been better.

I also agree Mateusz may have been naive and too generous, with an expectation of fairness and goodwill that was apparently unfounded.

But still, not getting a written statement in advance that "in the event of a disconnection the game would be resumed" does not mean the game should not be resumed in the event of a disconnection (especially with an official witness).

As I said over on the facebook version of this thread (it's hard to keep track of all the parallel discussions!), even if you accept the argument that Mateusz should have reported a previous instance of lag (yet the referee statement refers to "continuing", is this accurate or an attempt to frame the situation as one to justify the decision?) and thus deserved to lose when he got another instance of lag at a more critical time, it leads to the following rather absurd situation:

- Let us assume Ali has experienced lag on KGS before from Israel. He remembers this fact. He plays the next game against Eric without telling the referee beforehand that he has experienced lag on KGS in the past. He lags out and loses on time. Referee rules he lost on time because he knew he lagged in the past and should have said so.
- Eric on the other hand has a nice fast connection in New York and has never noticed KGS lag (I doubt this is true but let's pretend). But as fate would have it he lags out and loses on time. "What a surprise!" he tells the referee "I've never had lag before". Referee says ok, let's resume/rematch/etc because lag is unusual for you.
- Or Ali has had lag on KGS before, but forgot because it was many years ago and he mostly plays on Tygem now. As before he lags out but never says he hadn't had lag before (without lying), Referee forgives the lag and they resume.
- Or he had had lag before, but remembered and then lied about it. But he gets away with the lie and gets a resume.
- Or he lies that he never had lag, but someone digs a game out of the KGS archive showing him commenting after a lost on game time "... lag ". Aha! caught him, he has lagged before so loses on time.
This is just getting ridiculous, but it's a consequence of placing a key point of the ruling on prior experiences of lag.

- Presumably before the next game Ali will tell the referee that he, just like everyone (but to differing degrees), has experienced lag before. Then what? No new lag rules were announced as part of the referee decision.

The whole thing seems to be a way to deflect responsibility for the debacle from the organisers with the insufficient rules to deal with a predictable problem of internet play onto one of the players.

P.S should an instance of lag be reported during a game (is 100ms latency lag, 500ms)? And to whom? Was the referee even present/available during this match? HKA's talk of Eric hanging around for 5 hours makes me wonder if Myungwan was asleep in Korea and people where frantically running/phoning around looking for the referee. Should the player do so with the clock ticking, or disconnect from the game to pause the clock. That only works if you are connected when you leave. And what if your account is marked as a chronic escaper, in that case leaving makes you lose the game by forfeit from KGS rules. Must we then respect the server's judgement in this case?

Did that player fail to report the problem with the clock? If so, and Kim was the TD, probably tough luck. But in any event, the failure of other players to report the rusty clock did damage to the event. Somebody should have reported it.



They are playing on a 5 foot by 5 foot board?



I do believe that failure to play a stone on an intersection is an infringement of the rules, and the TD should be called. The logic of the game is not a good enough guide to tell where a stone is played. However a TD may use it in ascertaining what happened. For instance, he may ask the offender why he played where he said he did, instead of on the adjacent intersection.



I doubt it. The TD may rule that 1) the opponent committed an infraction by failing to play the stone on an intersection; 2) the subject condoned the infraction by making another play; 3) but the stone is still not on an intersection; 4) since the stone is not on an intersection, it is deemed to be unplayeed, and all subsequent plays are invalid; play is rolled back to the point where the stone was incorrectly placed, and put on the intersection indicated; 5) play is resumed from that point; 6) The opponent receives a warning about not playing his stones on the intersections, and told that in any future doubtful case his word will not be accepted.

Remember that the main principle is to restore equity if possible, the responsibility of the player to protect himself is secondary. In this case, the opponent may have lied about where he intended to play the stone, and may have benefited from observing later play, in which case the subject's failure to protect himself is costly. But the plays after the infraction being canceled, maybe there will be no cost.



The first time the kid bumps into a table the TD should have been called. When finally called, the TD tries to ascertain what happened. The kid is a witness. Maybe he noticed whether he knocked stone off the table or not. Assume that the kid noticed nothing. Assume also that the number of stones on the board and prisoners are consistent with whose turn it is to play. Assume also that neither player can remember enough of the play of the game to tell whether any additional stones belong on the board or not, or where they should be. There is no satisfactory solution, is there? Since the players do not agree on the state of the game and the TD cannot tell anything, either, I would void the game. I might even declare that both players lose. The referee's decision is final.

BTW, in a local tournament I once noticed that two stones were misplaced, on J-16 and L-16 instead of K-15 and K-17, where I had played them. Neither my opponent nor I knew how or when they had taken their new positions. (Neither of us had left the board during play.) Fortunately I had kept a game record. Not to protect myself, but better safe than sorry.



Cases 1) and 3) are about protecting the integrity of the
tournament. You can't just have faulty clocks and kids bumping to boards. Case 2) is more troubling, as it may indicate sharp practice. The aim of rulings is not to punish players, so I think the TD should warn the player first. After the warning, later infractions should be ruled against the player if equity cannot be restored.



If that is what a player thinks, then he should be prepared to live with the consequences.



The clock would have been removed, the kid would have been sidelined, the sloppy player would have been warned. If I were the TD, anyway.



No. But if equity cannot be restored, he may pay a cost for condoning an infraction or ignoring a problem.



In the example where the kid knocked some stones off the board and the player is unable to give the TD enough information to reconstruct the board, he may pay a price. But in general you can't report what you don't observe.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

While I may not agree with Kim's decision, as I do not know what evidence and arguments he considered, I cannot accuse him of ill will or unfairness. He was the person who was supposed to make the ruling, no one else, and I believe that he did so without favoritism.

Both sides should accept the ruling with good grace and move on.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

If what Surma knew or did not know is considered relevant, should we not hold Kim to the same standard?

I have experienced lag on KGS before, but Mateusz’s statement suggests that he experienced an atypical amount of lag earlier in the tournament.

People talk about having a faulty clock in a real tournament. Maybe clocks are finicky and prone to periodic failure. You play in the game and at the last byoyomi period, the clock fails. It shouldn’t be an automatic time loss, because these things happen.

But if you are in a tournament and the clock has been acting up at move 10, you should talk to the TD and either get a new clock or see what you can do about it. Don’t keep playing and then complain about losing on time.

Before Mateusz complained, he was in the first category. He wasn’t going to lose on time for internet lag.

But when he said his clock had been faulty throughout the whole tournament, the question becomes, “why are you just telling us now”?

Everyone has a faulty clock sometimes. Everyone gets lag now and then. But if your connection is so crappy you are losing byoyomi periods on multiple games, I think it’s sensible to have a discussion about it with the TD before you lose on time.

My personal view is that maybe it’s a bit harsh to say the discussion is Mateusz’s responsibility to initiate. But it sure would have been a lot clearer if he had.

_________________
it's be happy, not achieve happiness

I agree. Players have sown the seed and they can play now.

Now it is our job to nourish disbelief, malevolence, hatred, to whip up tension and to start bloody hostilities.
Soon every man in the world will know what go is all about

Not to hijack this thread, but here is how I would have ruled on that case. (Hidden out of courtesy.)

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

Be my guest. Don't invite him to referee your next tournament, if you don't like his rulings.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

Ha!

I think we have a mission statement for L19!

_________________
it's be happy, not achieve happiness