Summary of the widened Prisoner Gate in LG Cup Game 3
I understand that there are already many posts about this, but I just wanted to post an objective summary about what happened.
I can also see that many people are heated up, but please refrain from name calling or hate speech. You can share your dissatisfaction, give criticisms or suggestions, but let's not spread hate surrounding a game that is supposed to promote peace.
LG Cup Finals Game 3 Results:
Ke Jie loses to Byun Sangil by withdrawal
Summary:
About the game itself, Ke Jie made a big misread on the left side when he created the stone tower and was at a huge disadvantage. He tried to create a big moyo on the right side to fight and things were getting complicated when the incident happened.
Just like Game 2, Ke Jie failed to keep the prisoners in the stone bowl lid. Not just once, but twice. After that, he noticed the judge walking in with the Chinese coach, and he quickly realised his mistake and kept the stones in the lid. Not long after that, the judge intervened and put the game to a pause to discuss the penalty. Here’s a video that shows the moment where Ke Jie didn’t put the prisoners in the lid.
The discussion lasted for more than 2 hours. It was found out later that the Chinese team was not protesting against the penalty, but they were protesting against the timing of the intervention. It was a critical situation pending Byun’s move, and by pausing the game at that moment it gives Byun an unfair advantage to think more. Granted the AI says that Byun is already winning by a lot, human-wise it’s still quite complicated. Ke Jie also kept trying to bring across this point. Here’s a video that shows the moment when Ke Jie got angry and started shouting.
During the discussion, the judge requested Ke Jie to continue the game with a penalty of 2 points, but the Chinese team requested a rematch since it was impossible to continue the game after getting disrupted so much. Both sides couldn’t arrive at an agreement so the Chinese team just left the place. The judge ruled it as a loss by withdrawal for Ke Jie. LG released an official statement (in Korean) to explain the results. In this statement, it was also mentioned that the Korea Baduk Association will have an urgent meeting on 24th January at 10am to discuss the rules and regulations.
Later, the Chinese Weiqi Association released a statement (in Chinese) saying that they don’t accept the result of Game 3.
As a Go fan, I must say that this is a very sad result that probably nobody wanted to see. I share the sentiments of many fans and pros who say that the game should be decided on the board and not based on rules. While having such a rule is understandable, the implementation can be greatly improved. How to pause the game to minimise the impact is also an issue worth working on in the future.
I think the ideal solution is to create a prisoner counter that will display the number of prisoners in real time for the players. It can be manual or automatic, and this will save the trouble of keeping the prisoners at a designated location. It can help the players under all rules. When doing the final counting using territory scoring, you just need to fill up the board with the difference in the number of prisoners. Easier said than done, of course.
The prize money for the LG Cup is 300 million won for the champion and 100 million won for the runner-up. It is unclear whether Ke Jie will accept the money for the runner-up.