Life In 19x19

< post deleted because it clearly breaks the TOS about discussing politics and also about insulting fellow posters. -JB >

< Post deleted because it qotes the above post and because it continues a political discussion. -JB >

breakfast wrote:That time Luc was not the member of Rules commission, so I asked to invite someone from the commission instead.
They had big list of members, including Victor Bogdanov from Russia. Now the EGF page is updated:
http://eurogofed.org/egf/commissions.htm
I was suprised to see the 3rd person (Luc), who had no relation to the commission at all, so I protested.
Please understand my motivation. Personally I have nothing against Luc - I don't even know him well.

The page of the commission was outdated and propably some other commissions are still outdated. The rules commission had only two members already since EGC 2009. Once I found that the members who had resigned from the commission where still at the web page I asked the page to be corrected.

RobertJasiek wrote:Since Fischer time is OT, I do not state my opinion about it in this thread.

There is separate thread that deals with EGF and Fischer. But I do not think that this is off topic, because ING clock do support Fischer and with Fischer there would not happen this rules farce. That is because time management is simple and easy enough that we can just declare time losses as time losses and enforce players to keep volume away from the minimum. That is because with Fischer timing there would be no need for hearing continuous and disturbing ing clock's reading of seconds.

[admin]

I ask all posters in this thread to remember that is is about a particular event in a particular tournament, and it is not about the character of the Russian people, pro or con. Please take political or ethnic disscussions someplace else.
I invite the more vigorous posters in this thread to re-read the TOS at http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... f=5&t=1006

Thanks,
JB

[/admin]

I am the referee that made the first instance decision in the game (I ruled that the clock had malfunctioned and was to be replaced) and would like to offer my opinion. It will, of course, be strongly biased against the decision, so please remember to take the usual grain of salt.

Firstly, about the "European legal traditions" that were magicked up to change the composition of the arbitration body after the dispute had already occurred: if such traditions are to be observed, then it should be impossible for the rules commission to act as an arbitration body at all. They were the ones who wrote the rules after all, so the principle of separation of powers should apply. In simpler terms, it should be impossible for a single body to write ambiguous laws and then later selectively enforce whichever bits they happen to like at the moment.

Secondly, the silent byo-yomi (as invented by the "majority reasoning" to support their opinion) is not an actual time mechanism. It has never been intentionally used in any tournament, and never will be.

Thirdly, the decision completely overlooks the part of the Appeals Committee decision that deprecates the use of the possibly-silent clocks.

Fourthly, the decision can only be found on an unofficial Internet discussion board. No reference to the decision can be found on the EGF web page. This is not a proper way to handle decisions which are apparently to be treated as precedents for any future rulings.

Finally, I do not agree with the decision, nor am I willing to tolerate any rules that allow such an abusive treatment of the players. The decision just states that the rules are currently useless because the arbitrators themselves have specifically made it so in the year 2007. So the important question is, how can we fix the rules?

breakfast wrote:If you check any EGF AGM meeting you can see that we always have 2 groups: West Europe and East Europe.
These groups always vote against each other proposals.
And there is a big list of countries who vote against ANY proposals from the Russian Go Federation.
Just because they hate russians.

This is not true, fortunately. A good counter example from this year's congress is the championship system. It was the Russian federation that brought the old proposal back on the agenda, during the pre-AGM meeting, otherwise it would not have been voted on, and it won. Essentially the same proposal had been made in previous years by the Dutch and by the Swedish and was strongly advocated this time by the BGA, but it was the Russian federation that initiated its revival. As far as Sweden is concerned, we had the official Russian proposal (your proposal) as our second preference.

My impression is that the western European EGF members normally vote according to their judgement on the contents of the proposals, or possibly based on their confidence in the proposing individuals or organisations, but certainly not based on any general aversions against russians or other nationals.

best regards,
Henric

bass wrote:Fourthly, the decision can only be found on an unofficial Internet discussion board. No reference to the decision can be found on the EGF web page. This is not a proper way to handle decisions which are apparently to be treated as precedents for any future rulings.

This looks like an important point. Precedences and prior practice should be accessible of course, to referees and to players. The rules commission does collect important decisions in the past, doesn't it?

The case that's discussed in this thread can reasonably be argued both ways, as we have seen. But one of the most important points about rules is that they have to be applied uniformly. I might have missed it, but I haven't seen any reference in the rulings to the precedent in the 2008 EGC, with a pretty analogous case with a silent clock, where the referee ruled loss on time. It would be very unsatisfactory if the same rules are applied differently from time to time, in the same situation. In this case it was even the same player, Dinerchtein, who lost on time in 2008. If there had been contradictory rulings, both times going against Dinerchtein, the rules application would look very, very bad. Isn't this aspect important, you think?

best regards,
Henric

henric wrote:

bass wrote:Fourthly, the decision can only be found on an unofficial Internet discussion board. No reference to the decision can be found on the EGF web page. This is not a proper way to handle decisions which are apparently to be treated as precedents for any future rulings.

This looks like an important point. Precedences and prior practice should be accessible of course, to referees and to players. The rules commission does collect important decisions in the past, doesn't it?

The case that's discussed in this thread can reasonably be argued both ways, as we have seen. But one of the most important points about rules is that they have to be applied uniformly. I might have missed it, but I haven't seen any reference in the rulings to the precedent in the 2008 EGC, with a pretty analogous case with a silent clock, where the referee ruled loss on time. It would be very unsatisfactory if the same rules are applied differently from time to time, in the same situation. In this case it was even the same player, Dinerchtein, who lost on time in 2008. If there had been contradictory rulings, both times going against Dinerchtein, the rules application would look very, very bad. Isn't this aspect important, you think?

best regards,
Henric

I too thought this was one of the strangest aspects of the decision - but I don't see any record of these two disputes.

Javaness wrote:I too thought this was one of the strangest aspects of the decision - but I don't see any record of these two disputes.

The EGC 2008 referee decision never was protested.

bass wrote:

Javaness wrote:I too thought this was one of the strangest aspects of the decision - but I don't see any record of these two disputes.

The EGC 2008 referee decision never was protested.

Ok, I suppose you think it should have been?
But even if the referee decision in 2008 was not contested it was an important ruling in a top game in the European Championship. Isn't it fair to expect that it should have been taken note of somehow, like clarifying the rules for the future, if the appeal instances weren't happy with rthe referee's decision in 2008?

best regards,
Henric