EGF vs AGA pros win-and-continue match

[Bill Spight]

If you accept the loss of a byoyomi period because of netlag, why not accept the loss of a game?

If you accept the loss of 40 cents from rounding, why not accept the loss of 400 dollars?

I do not remember having a transaction where 400 dollars was a rounding error, but if I ever had one, that would be OK.

Maybe he just acted in the spirit of good sportmanship, trying to cope with the awkward conditions while he could. And to play a good game.

I do not wish to guess about Surma's mental state, but I agree that it could be in the spirit of good sportsmanship to bear the handicap of netlag. Speaking for myself, in the spirit of good sportsmanship I have always allowed my opponent to take back a move, except in tournament play, without asking for one myself, except during my first months of play, when that was the custom. But I accepted the risks of doing so, and occasionally paid the consequences. By the same token, I think that if one accepts the burden of netlag because of good sportsmanship, one also accepts the occasional bad result.

[Bill Spight]

- Mateusz's proctor has witnessed Mateusz's efforts to make a move (clicking his mouse several times) starting 10 seconds before the timeout
- Mateusz was aware of the continuing several seconds' delay between his clicking on the client and his move appearing on the screen, during this game, and also in previous games

The options discussed were (a) to continue the game from where it stopped, (b) to have a re-match, and (c) to follow the tournament clock and announce timeout.

Myungwan Kim explains the main reasons for choosing option (c) are:
- The proctor's job did not include checking player's moves (they were only instructed to make sure the players do not use an AI tool during the game).
- Mateusz was aware of the technical issue for some time, but never reported the issue to the tournament organizers.

This decision seems really odd to me. It seems to argue that the witness statements should be disregarded, because they were not having the correct job description.

I'm not sure, but the point may have been that the proctors were not in charge of keeping time, not whether they were accurate witnesses or not. The final decision did not depend upon whether Surma clicked his screen before his byoyomi period was up or not.

That's very hard to fathom. Then to go beyond that and argue that Mateusz's strategy of playing with less than 50 seconds byo-yomi means he is culpable. It seems to say, yes there is lag, yes the proctors noticed it, but Mateusz is at fault for not complaining earlier.

Yup. The players have a responsibility to inform the referee or TD of irregularities when they occur. Surma did not do so.

This is a professional match, sports fans, not a casual game.

Mateusz reported the problem here when it occurred, that is all he had to do in my opinion.

But he had failed to report it when it had occurred earlier. The instances of netlag were not independent. I may not have made the same ruling that Kim did, but he made a proper ruling according to principle.

In any case, it seems just plain ugly that if Mateusz had said nothing then he would have had a rematch, although the official statement does not confirm that sequence of events.

It seems so. One problem with the fact that go has few significant irregularities is that referees are not primed to deal with them, either. In the class I took to become a bridge director, we were taught that when you as director are called to the table, the first thing to do is to ascertain what happened. Apparently Kim did not do that, but relied upon incomplete information. That is why, I think, he made three different rulings. From the start, had he gotten the information about Surma's repeated netlag problems, I think he would have made only one ruling.

[Javaness2]

I'm proud that you qualified as a bridge director all those years ago. What does his ruling hold for future games, what does it mean? The referee already knew that the hazard of lag existed on the internet. The referee seems to agree that here a case of lag happened. So does it mean that if KGS counts you out then that's it, end of story. Should the players declare that they have never had lag before (i.e. lie) or should they declare that they have had lag before.
It all seems very incomplete. The actual complaints, or protests, are not visible to Joe Public. We don't even know who actually made this decision - was it, as was earlier implied, a referee team or just 1 referee? The sequence of protests, and or intermediate decisions, is also unclear.
I think that I lost interest in watching further games in this competition.

[Bojanic]

So here is official statement:

Final Decision for the Round 4 of the Transatlantic Team Championship

After several days of intense discussions, Myungwan Kim 9P, the referee of the tournament has made a final call, announcing Eric Lui 1P has won the game on time. Two key facts on the matter were:

- Mateusz's proctor has witnessed Mateusz's efforts to make a move (clicking his mouse several times) starting 10 seconds before the timeout
- Mateusz was aware of the continuing several seconds' delay between his clicking on the client and his move appearing on the screen, during this game, and also in previous games

The options discussed were (a) to continue the game from where it stopped, (b) to have a re-match, and (c) to follow the tournament clock and announce timeout.

Myungwan Kim explains the main reasons for choosing option (c) are:
- The proctor's job did not include checking player's moves (they were only instructed to make sure the players do not use an AI tool during the game).
- Mateusz was aware of the technical issue for some time, but never reported the issue to the tournament organizers.

The next round of the Transatlantic Team Championship, between Eric Lui and Ali Jabarin will take place on May 26, from 14:00 US EDT or 20:00 CEST.

https://www.facebook.com/transatlantict ... tion=group

[Bojanic]

As for explanation:

Myungwan Kim explains the main reasons for choosing option (c) are:
- The proctor's job did not include checking player's moves (they were only instructed to make sure the players do not use an AI tool during the game).

Proctors had to closely watch players, and most certainly would have witness if something unexpected, like lag, power outage etc happened.
Dismissing them as a witness is stupid.

- Mateusz was aware of the technical issue for some time, but never reported the issue to the tournament organizers.

Mateusz noticed lag od few seconds, and played moves 10 seconds earlier. He did not notice lag of 10 seconds before.
And organizers are completely unaware that lag is something that exist...

------

Overall, this explanation is plainly stupid.
If they just said, "those are KGS rules, you agreed to it", it would be OK.
On this way, they basically say that they would agree to lag argument, if there was proctor who would specifically monitor it (as if current proctor could not spot it), and if Szurma complained about it before. It seems that only referee doesn't know that lag is pretty common, esp. if you play long games. Plainly stupid.

This is attempt to put all the blame on faulty organisation and bad referee decisions on a player.

[Knotwilg]

Morality aside, there is a logical fallacy about the decision.

The key argument and inferred rule is "if a player is aware of conditions that may disturb his performance to the point of losing for other reasons than those of Go itself, he should inform the organizers".

So now the organizers are informed, a fortiori. For the sake of the argument, let's suppose all players, AGA and EGF, make a statement to the organizers "we have become aware that network conditions may cause time-out". Now what? What are the organizers going to do about it? If they do nothing now, then they would have done nothing if Mateusz had informed them. So it wouldn't have made any difference. If they do something, what will it be? They can't affect network conditions all over the world, so they can do two things:

- change the rule: if you time out outside your power of will, then (something else than loss); but then they could just as well have taken the decision including the Surma case
- bring all players physically together; which is practically impossible

OK maybe not a 100% logical fallacy but surely a practical fallacy. Unless the organizers' analysis is not that "network problems may cause a time-out but assume the problem lies with his computer, or with Kazan. Now how do they know? And how should Mateusz know? Are tournament organizers and players expected to have the IT expertise to understand the scope of the problem?

[Renter]

Oh wow, I did not expect this at all. I thought if they gave the win to Eric it would have been with an actual reasoning. Instead they just decided to wash their hands of responsibility and dump it on the player.

- The proctor's job did not include checking player's moves (they were only instructed to make sure the players do not use an AI tool during the game).

Holy escape, Batman! I haven't seen a backpedal this fast since last week on Donald Trump's twitter!

If this is truly ALL the proctors did, shame on the tournament. Are they seriously claiming the proctors followed the players to the toilet to check they weren't cheating on a phone or something?

- Mateusz was aware of the technical issue for some time, but never reported the issue to the tournament organizers.

This person is a Go professional. He had people watching the game locally. Why and how in the tournament rules is it stated that if lag is not reported it's the responsibility of the player? Is it not reasonable to assume that the proctor would at least do that much? Or if it's pretty well-known that Surma generally has a bad Internet connection, why the heck is it his responsibility to inform the TOs about it?

Further, is the proctor not a tournament official, if in a minor capacity? If Surma has complained to him AT LEAST ONCE about the lag or he has noticed it himself, this reasoning is false and biased.

Let this sink in: The tournament organizers are basically saying that if you do not after EACH AND EVERY lag spike inform the TOs of it, they will use that fact against you. Also, they will NOT fix the clock in this case, because it's KGS and they can't do that. So they are dumping a responsibility to do something that any reasonable person would expect the tournament organizers to handle to the player without informing them beforehand. The reasoning is pure bullcrap and was drawn from the hat because the TOs do not want to admit they made a mistake. If they want to use this reasoning, they could use it at a later date, but to introduce it here is ridiculous, unfair and against the spirit of the game and the tournament.

The tournament organizers are shamefully ignoring their responsibility for the choice of venue, observers and practical issues and are letting what is effectively a broken chess clock decide an important game. They are also unfairly inserting ad-hoc rules into the situation. This decision is a disgrace to international Go and a slap in the face to the players and viewers alike.

[yakcyll]

So now the organizers are informed, a fortiori. For the sake of the argument, let's suppose all players, AGA and EGF, make a statement to the organizers "we have become aware that network conditions may cause time-out". Now what? What are the organizers going to do about it? If they do nothing now, then they would have done nothing if Mateusz had informed them. So it wouldn't have made any difference. If they do something, what will it be? They can't affect network conditions all over the world, so they can do two things:

- change the rule: if you time out outside your power of will, then (something else than loss); but then they could just as well have taken the decision including the Surma case
- bring all players physically together; which is practically impossible

I'd suggest a third option: do not change the rules, accept KGS as the time keeper and admit publicly that choosing KGS as the time keeper given the networking conditions betweeen the USA and Russia (mainly the distance) was a dumb idea from the beginning. This whole ordeal is a massive mess-up, but changing how it is going to play out in the middle of it seems even more unprofessional than what we're dealing with now to me. Changing the medium to something more neutral for all players (a different server) is an option I suppose, but it would have to be agreed upon by everybody and in this unfortunate situation I can't see everybody coming to an agreement.

Let this sink in: The tournament organizers are basically saying that if you do not after EACH AND EVERY lag spike inform the TOs of it, they will use that fact against you.

That's a strawman. Has anybody aside from Mateusz known that he had connectivity issues in previous games? Do you really think nobody would react and help him out if he had mentioned it the first time around, before a loss occurred because of it?

[Renter]

For clarification, if the tournament organizers had simply stated that this was a loss on time, in the future we will be monitoring lag and other circumstances so this does not happen again, I would be annoyed but in general fine with it. These things happen.

However, the rationale given is just a bunch of excuses. None of the given reasons are significant and mostly just fall apart under scrutiny.

This is not fair play, this is not sportsmanship. This is just politics and it's ugly and wrong.

[jann]

By the same logic, if in a tournament you notice your clock starts to act up, getting a bit harder to push, then when if finally breaks you lose on time? For not reporting earlier?

BTW, am I the only one bothered by this quote:

Then, three players from the AGA pros team (William Gansheng Shi, Calvin Sun and Eric Lui) made an official protest - in their opinion I should lose by time. They wrote that the proctor's job is only to check if the player doesn't cheat.

There seems to be a HUGE gap in (un)sportsmanship between
1: continuing a lost game where only outside disturbance can change the result, and
2: actively protesting a referee decision that tries to mitigate such outside disturbances.

I'm not sure (what) the American team tried to achieve here, but I do have an idea what they managed to.

[Aram]

How much more can they stack the odds in favour of the AGA players?


1. EGF players have to finish the games at 1 AM. Try suggesting to any mind sports tournament that its the correct time to play mind sports and theyll probobly laugh you out the door.

2. The tournament is played on a server in the US. So far this has been a theoretical advantage, now it is a very real one.

Because of it:

- The AGA players have more time to think, since EGF pros have to play well in advance
- The AGA players dont have to deal with the stress of disconnections, lag, etc. Just the knowledge of possible problems with connections will negatively affect the EGF players.

3. The referee has lived in the US since 2008, moved there to promote Go in the US, was part of forming the AGA Pro system. He also changed his opinion twice on the ruling in favour of the AGA. (Info taken from senseis, so please correct me if im wrong, and info might not be correct.)
Im sorry, but perhaps choose a referee next time whoms partiality cant so easily be questioned? I am not saying he is partial, im just saying that the optics arent exactly good, and i personally wouldnt trust a referee who has so strong connections to only one of the teams.


Turnings things the other way around, do you really think the AGA Pros would be happy with the following:
- Tournament played on a Russian server, with all AGA Pros experiencing random 1-10 second lag spikes and having to play with less time.
- Tournament ending at 1am or 2am for AGA Players
- Tournament referee (no referee committee, only one referee) who is Russian

[Uberdude]

3. The referee has lived in the US since 2008, moved there to promote Go in the US, was part of forming the AGA Pro system. He also changed his opinion twice on the ruling in favour of the AGA. (Info taken from senseis, so please correct me if im wrong, and info might not be correct.)

He moved back to Korea a year or two ago. But yes he was instrumental in setting up the AGA pro system. In fact as shown in the Surrounding Game film he makes the following speech to the new AGA pros Andy Liu and Gansheng Shi (video extract thanks to JeanSebL at https://www.facebook.com/transatlantict ... %22R%22%7D).
"You are not just individual Go players anymore. You are representing the American Go Association and the American Go community as a whole"

[Javaness2]

Is it true that both teams refused to agree to a rematch?

[Aram]

Is it true that both teams refused to agree to a rematch?

Does not matter. The referee can still decide it to be a rematch.

If either team after that ruling refuse the rematch, its on the team/players, not the referee. If both would refuse to play it would probably mean a loss for both sides.

A referees decission can not be influenced about what the teams refuse or do not refuse to do before there even is a ruling. The referee makes a ruling, not the teams.

[Knotwilg]

I'd suggest a third option: do not change the rules, accept KGS as the time keeper and admit publicly that choosing KGS as the time keeper given the networking conditions betweeen the USA and Russia (mainly the distance) was a dumb idea from the beginning.

I get you, but as said, this can't be a logical consequence of the statement that "Mateusz knowing about lag affecting his play should have informed the organizers" implying they would then have done something else than nothing. If they don't change the rules now that they ARE informed, his not informing them can't have been a differentiator.