Thought I’d start a thread on this, there doesn’t seem to be one yet, and it might be of interest to the go (aka baduk) players on this board, and possibly also the players of other abstract strategy boardgames.
Last week saw the final to the Samsung Cup, one of the most prestigious international tournaments in this field (with a prize money around $250k for the winner). It brought together two of the best players in the world, Ke Jie of China and Shin Jinseo of South Korea, in a series of matches under best-of-three rules.
Owing to COVID-19, the tournament is played online this year rather than on a physical board. Right in the first game, Shin Jinseo made a misclick - he accidentally clicked his mouse, making a move on the edge of the board that was very evidently useless and unintended. Alas, tournament rules do not allow for undoing a move once made. Shin proceeded to play at first but ultimately resigned the game, and Ke proceeded to pocket the overall title after winning also the second game the next day.
Here is a news report of the story, and here and here are homourously edited videos capturing the reactions of the players to this mishap.
It’s a sad story for Shin; yet, in a way it is reassuring that even at the Olympian heights of such top-class players, making slips like this is still human.
Is one bad move so consequential that it would have caused Shin to lose? Or was it just a humorous mistake that nonetheless only affected the game a tiny bit?
I would think in casual amateur go, it would not be so serious, you might still catch up later on. But at top level, the differences in skill between players are so slight that one pointless move essentially gives the other side another free move, an advantage that cannot be compensated for later. Also, it was rather early in the game, when a lot of territory was still up for grabs (which is the aim in go) and each move is thus potentially a big one.
From what I can tell, the discussion in go circles focusses on (1) amusement and (2) debating whether fairness would have required Ke to respond with a similarly useless move, to even things out.
I should add, for those familiar with chess but not go, that there is one important respect in which the two games differ: In go you start with an empty board and then gradually fill it with stones; until the very end, there will always be some point on the board where you can gain an advantage by making a move. Only when there are no such points left will the players pass (which is allowed, making a move is not compulsory), and the game comes to an end. So the situation of “Zugzwang”, where you would prefer not to make a move but are compelled to, does not arise. Making a move will always get you an advantage, and making, essentially, two in a row can be quite a considerable one.
Sounds to me like the online interface could use some rethinking.
I assume that if you accidentally drop a stone in real-life play and it lands on a legal spot on the board, that doesn’t count as a move.
While I appreciate that there might be some kind of way to prevent accidental moves from being sent, it’s also possible that whatever system you set up can be accidentally circumvented. All you can do is make it less and less likely. That said, if all it took was one errant click to cause a move to be sent, that’s really awful design for a competitive game that’s substituting for a live game and is simply asking for a mistake like this to be made and to be relevant. When I do continuing education live online, I have to make two clicks decently separated by space (one on an answer bubble, one on submit) during the time allowed to confirm that I’m paying attention. It would require a major spasm to accidentally send a move if the submit button was always decently far away from the board.
From https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/Chinese.html#:~:text=If%20a%20player%20removes%20a,place%20it%20on%20any%20point.
“If a player accidentally drops the stone he was about to play, he may pick it up and place it on any point.”
Which is, like, the only sane way to adjudicate a board game.