Forum for Dispute Mero-Jasiek
Spirit of the law [#2189]
This looks a lot like a typical case of letter vs. spirit of the law.
![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law
The spirit of Ing's dispute resolution law is probably along the lines of removing any referee decisions from the resolution of life and death, and the exact procedure is very likely cooked up to avoid infinite resumptions of play, or something thereabouts.
Whatever the spirit of the law exactly is, it is certain that the law was not intended to be a tool for players with which to trick their opponents just before the point counting.
The letter of the law enables the (ab)use of this law for greatly influencing the result of the game, should one of the players be ignorant of the particulars (or more appropriately, peculiarities) of the rules.
Mr. Jasiek is well known for his ability to read and exactly interpret the rules, and also to a lesser extent for his not-exactly-stellar empathy, so he cannot be said to have committed an error by attempting to game the system; after all, he would be the one to find any loopholes in the rules, and he would not see any ethical problems in using any aspect of the rules, intended or accidental, to get a win.
Also, the appeals committee and the rules commission have performed correctly by stopping the abuse of the letter of the law in favour of following the spirit of the law.
-Bass, 2010-02-10
Bass, the spirit of Ing game end rules is to avoid any Japanese style rules adjudication by letting the players and only the players determine life and death by a) playing it out with plays or passes or b) voluntary removals.
While infinite resumptions are prohibited (since invariation is prohibited), multiple (even many) resumptions are intended. This is clear from a) the necessity to make 4 successive passes, b) Mr. Yang's related explanation and c) the Ing Wei-ch'i Educational Foundation delegates' votes in favour of multiple resumptions.
I agree that the Ing rules (in whichever year's edition) are not intended as a tool with which to trick their opponents just before the point counting. But was there anybody who tricked the opponent?! The dispute was not about tricking or not tricking the opponent but about how to interpret and apply the rules.
What is "greatly influencing the result of the game"?
What is "abuse" of the Ing 1991 Rules?
I suggest you be careful to give impartial answers.
If you mean that I would not see any ethical problems in using any aspect of the Ing rules (in whichever year's English edition), then that is about right because they do not violate human rights or other higher human standards outside the rules. If you mean that I would not see any ethical problems in using any aspect of any Go ruleset of rules of play or tournament rules, then that is wrong because some rulesets endanger human rights.
You claim that the appeals committee and the rules commission did perform correctly by stopping the abuse of the letter of the law in favour of following the spirit of the law. So you claim that there was some abuse at all. Which? You also claim that the appeals committee and the rules commission followed the spirit of the law. 1) Why? 2) Why is not giving reasons (rules commission) for a judgement in the spirit of the law? 3) Why is giving reasons that violate the spirit of the law (appeals committee when ignoring the third and fourth successive pass without giving reasons for that) in the spirit of the law? 4) Why is letting only my opponent do the rest of the game ending procedures but not letting me participate in it according to the spirit of the law? 5) Why is violating the spirit of the law (to avoid any Japanese style rules adjudication by letting the players and only the players determine life and death by a) playing it out with plays or passes or b) voluntary removals.) by allowing only (b) somehow but preventing (a) in agreement with the spirit the law? 6) The referee's, the appeals committee's and the rules commission's judgement support a game ending process that would have been in the spirit of Japanese style rules. How is replacing the spirit of Ing style rules by the spirit of Japanese style rules in angreement with the former?
It is completely obvious that the 4 pass rule (letter of the law) is intended (spirit of the law) to allow the players to determine life and death through play when neccessary (spirit of the law).
In the dispute in question, determining life and death through play was not necessary, because it was obvious which groups were alive or dead (given the strength of the players).
So with your actions, you violated the spirit of the law "use the 4 pass rule only when necessary", by using it when it was not necessary.
Furthermore, since you attempted to achieve an unreasonable outcome, you actions can properly be classified as "abuse". The referee, appeals committee and rules committee all recognized that, and acted appropriately.
"when necessary": This can also be when the players do not remove stones informally / voluntarily / by agreement.
The rules do not have a clause "when it is obvious which groups were alive or dead (given the strength of the players)". Bass and you seem to wish an EGF tournament rule overriding all rulesets of play by saying something like this: "Stones that the omniscient player would call dead have to be removed regardless of the rules of play." Such perfect hypothetical play is Japanese style life and death.
Ing rules spirit is to allow the players to play or pass (until the 4th successive pass). I.e., when I do not remove stones voluntarily and when my opponent does not invoke any verbal agreement on possibly removing stones, then my opponent has the option to choose plays instead of passes in an attempt to remove those stones.
The 4 pass rule applies in each game. Applying it in each game under original Ing rules is thus necessary. (What you mean is maybe something else: that applying it while there are stones that the omniscient player would call dead was not necessary if at least one player would act to remove the stones.)
At the moment of scoring, Ing rules score the board as is. What is reasonable then is the application of the rules' Area Scoring. This is correct usage of the rules. It is not abuse. Abuse would be to violate the rules by inventing a non-existing tournament rule like "Stones that the omniscient player would call dead have to be removed regardless of the rules of play." and applying it despite its non-existence. What you suggest would thus be abuse of the rules. (It would be entirely different if such a tournament rule had already been valid before the start of the game.)
The beauty of Area Scoring is though to do without any perfect play rules.
Bass, you and others put great emphasis on my supposed abuse. You always forget that also my opponent would have to be described as having done the same supposed abuse. Besides he would have to be described as having done it first (with the 3rd pass in succession instead of making any other attempt or - due to the speed of the pass - at that time allowing me any other attempt of doing removals informally / by agreement). His actions have altered the expected positional judgement as much as my actions.
It is unclear whether referee, appeals committee or rules commission did ground their decisions on a positional judgement at all. Due to missing or too short reasons we cannot know.
"when necessary": This can also be when the players do not remove stones informally / voluntarily / by agreement.
No. This letter of the law. Spirit of the law is that the 4 pass rule only comes into play when the players have attempted to come to an agreement, but were unable to do so, because there is a complicated situation on the board (a rules beast), and have agreed to resume playing to resolve the dispute.
The rules do not have a clause "when it is obvious which groups were alive or dead (given the strength of the players)". Bass and you seem to wish an EGF tournament rule overriding all rulesets of play by saying something like this: "Stones that the omniscient player would call dead have to be removed regardless of the rules of play." Such perfect hypothetical play is Japanese style life and death.
The rules do not have such a clause because it would be nonsense. "when it is obvious which groups were alive or dead (given the strength of the players)" is part of the spirit of the law, not part of the letter of the law. It does not require omniscience, but requires reasonable behavior by the players.
Ing rules spirit is to allow the players to play or pass (until the 4th successive pass). I.e., when I do not remove stones voluntarily and when my opponent does not invoke any verbal agreement on possibly removing stones, then my opponent has the option to choose plays instead of passes in an attempt to remove those stones.
Nope, wrong. Ing rules spirit is to only use plays to remove dead stones when two reasonable players cannot come to an agreement. (Note the clause "reasonable" here! If one of the players simply refuses to come to an agreement, despite there being no particularly complicated situation on the board, then he is being unreasonable and thus handling against the spirit of the rules).
The 4 pass rule applies in each game. Applying it in each game under original Ing rules is thus necessary. (What you mean is maybe something else: that applying it while there are stones that the omniscient player would call dead was not necessary if at least one player would act to remove the stones.)
According to the letter of the law, the 4 pass rule applies in each game. According to the spirit of the law, it only applies in games where a dispute about the life/death status of stones has arisen between two reasonable players.
At the moment of scoring, Ing rules score the board as is. What is reasonable then is the application of the rules' Area Scoring. This is correct usage of the rules. It is not abuse. Abuse would be to violate the rules by inventing a non-existing tournament rule like "Stones that the omniscient player would call dead have to be removed regardless of the rules of play." and applying it despite its non-existence. What you suggest would thus be abuse of the rules. (It would be entirely different if such a tournament rule had already been valid before the start of the game.)
Nope, you have misunderstood the meaning of the word "reasonable". It is only reasonable to score the board as is after the 4 pass rule has come into effect according to the spirit of the rules, which means that it is only reasonable to score the board as is if a dispute has arisen between two reasonable players who have then agreed to proceed playing to resolve the dispute and have agreed that they will count when next 4 passes in a row have occurred.
The beauty of Area Scoring is though to do without any perfect play rules.
Bass, you and others put great emphasis on my supposed abuse. You always forget that also my opponent would have to be described as having done the same supposed abuse. Besides he would have to be described as having done it first (with the 3rd pass in succession instead of making any other attempt or - due to the speed of the pass - at that time allowing me any other attempt of doing removals informally / by agreement). His actions have altered the expected positional judgement as much as my actions.
Your opponent was, if I am any judge, irritated by your unreasonable behavior, and was either unwilling to consider that you would abuse the rules to such a degree, or was willing to suffer a dispute in order to have the referee/appeals committee/rules commission point out to you that your behavior was wrong.
It is unclear whether referee, appeals committee or rules commission did ground their decisions on a positional judgment at all. Due to missing or too short reasons we cannot know.
It is very obvious that all of them chose to disregard the letter of the law in order to act in accordance with the spirit of the law. According to the letter of the law, you were correct. According to the spirit of the law, you were wrong. It is one of the main purposes of referees to make sure that the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of the law, is being followed. This is why all of them acted appropriately.
Apparently we have different opinions on what the spirit of the rules is related to the 4 successive passes. You should explain though why you think that it applied to complicated beasts only. I say: It is the most relevant in such cases.
We also have different opinions on what the spirit of the rules is related to obviously alive or dead stones. "when it is obvious which groups were alive or dead (given the strength of the players)" you call part of the spirit while I do not consider it part of the spirit. You consider such an explicit tournament rule nonsense while, if the intention should be to apply it, I consider it necessary to state that intention. This would not only be helpful but clarify that the original spirit to avoid Japanese style rules perfect play reference would be substituted by its usage.
Likewise I disagree with your assumption of a distinction between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" players. The rules are there for players without classification.
It is adventurous that you see a spirit in the Ing rules to only use plays to remove dead stones when two [reasonable or not] players cannot come to an agreement. The related text in the rules is so ambiguous that it is hard to decipher possible alternatives. Going beyond that and claiming one option to be of higher priority than the other is overinterpretation. It might be our wish that first an agreement is reached before one resorts to using plays for playing it out; the Simplified Ing Rules use that approach; but we cannot be sure for the original rules.
You sound like the 4 pass rule could not apply to a game between, what you would call, unreasonable players. Contrarily I think that then the rule is of greater importance: While between "reasonable" players in "ordinary positions" the last two passes are just nasty, between "unreasonable" players they fulfil a good purpose even in "ordinary positions".
Apparently we also disagree on what is "reasonable" here. You call it reasonable if the players remove the obvious stones somehow. I call it reasonable if a) the players remove the obvious stones somehow or else b) after 4 successive passes they score the area score to the board as is.
It is more than reasonable: It is very good because it applies the great simplicity of area scoring: static scoring of the final position (instead of depending on countless hypothetical variations like in Japanese scoring).
My opponent irritated? I don't think so. He was calm enough a) to leave the room, IIRC, twice during the game ending phases for a couple of minutes apparently to smoke and maybe to provoke me to resign and b) to try provoking me into an eye staring fight (you know, the kind of thing you see in comics; the first to look away "loses") while we were waiting for the referee for several minutes. This is not the behaviour of somebody "suffering" from a dispute but rather somebody actively seeking it.
Your conclusion that the arbitration bodies were neglecting the letter of the law is wrong at least partially: About the first thing the appeals committee did was to ask me if I had the Ing rules booklet with me, to borrow it from me and then to study its letters very carefully. Their given reason used a specialized term "Game Pause" specific in the Ing (1991) Rules. If they had wished to express matters in spirit of law rather than letter of law, then they would have behaved and expressed themselves very differently.
Then we disagree about application of the rules. You think that the spirit of the rules has higher priority. I think that the text of the rules has greater priority. I think so because the text is open to everybody while the spirit is pure guesswork and every interpreter might guess differently. Decisions must be predictable. This is achieved with greater likelihood if judges rely on the texts as far as possible. Real court judges also like to do that. Needless to say, both players and referees, citizens and judges have a much easier life if the used rules / laws are clear and unambiguous.
As indicated before, it would be possible to create overriding tournament rules that would put "common Go theory understanding" at top priority. It would spoil the simplicity of area scoring but at least it would avoid a possible ambiguity of whether such, as you call it, nonsense is a valid principle to be applied. I prefer to do without such a principle though because simplicity of the area scoring rules is a much higher value.
Apparently we have different opinions on what the spirit of the rules is related to the 4 successive passes.
Yes, we do. I have derived my opinion from basic principles (see bottom) though, I fail to see what basis you have for yours.
You should explain though why you think that it applied to complicated beasts only. I say: It is the most relevant in such cases.
When there are no complicated beasts, then there is no need to remove stones by play, thus the four pass rule never comes into play except through abuse by an unreasonable player.
We also have different opinions on what the spirit of the rules is related to obviously alive or dead stones. "when it is obvious which groups were alive or dead (given the strength of the players)" you call part of the spirit while I do not consider it part of the spirit. You consider such an explicit tournament rule nonsense while, if the intention should be to apply it, I consider it necessary to state that intention. This would not only be helpful but clarify that the original spirit to avoid Japanese style rules perfect play reference would be substituted by its usage.
It is nonsense as a rule of play, because it is far to ambiguous to be applicable. When is it "obvious" which groups are alive? Why should the strength of the players matter to the rules of play?
Likewise I disagree with your assumption of a distinction between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" players. The rules are there for players without classification.
The spirit of the law assumes reasonableness. The very definition of "spirit of the law" is something like: What a reasonable person perceives to be the intent of the law, when the letter of the law is ambiguous or obviously mistaken.
It is adventurous that you see a spirit in the Ing rules to only use plays to remove dead stones when two [reasonable or not] players cannot come to an agreement. The related text in the rules is so ambiguous that it is hard to decipher possible alternatives. Going beyond that and claiming one option to be of higher priority than the other is overinterpretation. It might be our wish that first an agreement is reached before one resorts to using plays for playing it out; the Simplified Ing Rules use that approach; but we cannot be sure for the original rules.
There is nothing adventurous about it, I derive it from simple basic principles (see bottom).
You sound like the 4 pass rule could not apply to a game between, what you would call, unreasonable players. Contrarily I think that then the rule is of greater importance: While between "reasonable" players in "ordinary positions" the last two passes are just nasty, between "unreasonable" players they fulfil a good purpose even in "ordinary positions".
Between unreasonable players, there should always be a referee decision for disputes, because we cannot expect them to interpret the rules reasonably (as they are unreasonable).
Apparently we also disagree on what is "reasonable" here. You call it reasonable if the players remove the obvious stones somehow. I call it reasonable if a) the players remove the obvious stones somehow or else b) after 4 successive passes they score the area score to the board as is.
No, the second is unreasonable. The first is to follow intent of the law, the second is to follow the letter of the law. Following the letter of the law over the intent of the law is unreasonable.
It is more than reasonable: It is very good because it applies the great simplicity of area scoring: static scoring of the final position (instead of depending on countless hypothetical variations like in Japanese scoring).
Simplicity is not required for reasonableness, it is a completely independent quality. It is very easy to write extremely simple scoring rules that are extremely unreasonable. For example "All intersections on the board are black area, none are white area" is an extremely simple but extremely unreasonable scoring rule.
My opponent irritated? I don't think so. He was calm enough a) to leave the room, IIRC, twice during the game ending phases for a couple of minutes apparently to smoke and maybe to provoke me to resign and b) to try provoking me into an eye staring fight (you know, the kind of thing you see in comics; the first to look away "loses") while we were waiting for the referee for several minutes. This is not the behaviour of somebody "suffering" from a dispute but rather somebody actively seeking it.
Calmness is not mutually exclusive with being irritated. It is in fact often considered a laudable quality, for example in a referee, if someone is able to remain calm despite irritation. In this case, your opponent is obviously showing clear signs of irritation. It is reasonable for him to seek a dispute, because he was faced with unreasonable actions of someone trying to abuse the rules.
Your conclusion that the arbitration bodies were neglecting the letter of the law is wrong at least partially: About the first thing the appeals committee did was to ask me if I had the Ing rules booklet with me, to borrow it from me and then to study its letters very carefully. Their given reason used a specialized term "Game Pause" specific in the Ing (1991) Rules. If they had wished to express matters in spirit of law rather than letter of law, then they would have behaved and expressed themselves very differently.
Perhaps, though I think that their intent was simply to find a reasonable solution according to the intent of the law, and formulate it according to the letter of the law.
Then we disagree about application of the rules. You think that the spirit of the rules has higher priority. I think that the text of the rules has greater priority. I think so because the text is open to everybody while the spirit is pure guesswork and every interpreter might guess differently. Decisions must be predictable. This is achieved with greater likelihood if judges rely on the texts as far as possible. Real court judges also like to do that. Needless to say, both players and referees, citizens and judges have a much easier life if the used rules / laws are clear and unambiguous.
But the rules are not clear and unambiguous. You yourself have pointed out repeatedly how unclear the Ing rules were. The less clear the rules, the more important it becomes to act to the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.
As indicated before, it would be possible to create overriding tournament rules that would put "common Go theory understanding" at top priority. It would spoil the simplicity of area scoring but at least it would avoid a possible ambiguity of whether such, as you call it, nonsense is a valid principle to be applied. I prefer to do without such a principle though because simplicity of the area scoring rules is a much higher value.
Area scoring is not part of "tournament rules", but part of "rules of play", and is therefore independent of the tournament rules and cannot be spoiled by them.
a derivation of the spirit of the Ing rules from basic principles:
- Why do we play go? To enjoy ourselves, and measure ourselves intellectually against others.
- What is the purpose of playing a (tournament) game? To find the stronger player.
- Who is the stronger player? The player with the better tactical and strategic insight, given the time limits.
- What is the purpose of writing go rules? To facilitate the playing of go games.
- What is the intent of the rules? To allow us to find the stronger player without dispute.
Given that "stronger player" does not entail "better understanding of the scoring procedure", the 4 pass rule was not meant to enable a player to win the game when he has shown himself to be strategically and tactically weaker.
This is also why I call your actions "abuse". Although perceived as a negative term, abuse basically means "using for a purpose for which it was not intended". Your use of the "4 pass rule" for the purpose of "winning the game" is a purpose for which the rules was not intended, hence it is properly classified as abuse.
RobertJasiek: The basics from which I conclude my guess of the spirit of Ing style game ending rules are about a dozen English Ing rules booklets (and their rules and all their other accompanying texts) or related Ing booklets or texts on behalf of the Ing Foundation or their people and are Mr. Yang's (secretary of the Ing Foundation) related statements. Due to the language barrier, I cannot perceive tournament practice in Taiwan.
I exclude tournament practice in Europe because there every player is at best gussing what Ing rules might mean rather than knowing their precise intention for sure. Furthermore I have seen many players in Europe imposing their Japanese game ending understanding when playing under what a tournament announces as Ing rules. Since the spirit of what many Europeans want to see in Ing rules is not the spirit of Ing rules themselves, I do not interpret the former to be also the latter.
When there are no beasts, the 4 pass rule comes into play whenever the players use the rules as their source of action. I have frequently seen this. Players prefer to rely on the rules text than to invent and apply their own spirit of law guess. (I do not say that all players would do so. And maybe you don't.)
No such 4 passes are any abuse. I also would never call such players unreasonable. Rather they are very reasonable to abide by the rules.
To claim that application of a too ambiguous rule were nonsense makes some sense. Everybody draws a different line for himself. The extremists reject application of original Ing rules entirely because they think they were nothing but nonsense. Nie Weiping is maybe the most famous example: He rejected participation in the Ing Cup due to the rules. (Critics suspect nationalistic politics though.) I use a different approach: I try my best to understand the rules as well as possible despite their alleged ambiguities.
Yet another approach is much more popular though: taking the money, pretending to apply the rules but actually not caring for what the rules really mean below their trivial surface. Very unfortunate. The suspended Ing sponsorship for the EGF gives another chance to bring Go back to greater honesty.
I always support the view that the strength of players should not matter for rules application because all players have equal rights to the rules.
You are right that perception of spirit of law requires reasonableness. Reasonableness does not equate necessity of a single possible view on the spirit though. It requires more than only reasonableness. Facts in the context around the law are another source of insight.
Players being "unreasonable" do not necessarily violate the rules. E.g., the players might cooperate with virtual pass-fights and still find the correct score some hours full of adventures later. Rules must allow "unreasonable" players. What rules cannot manage completely though is intentional violation of the rules; then the players move outside the rules' inherent system.
Therefore normally a referee is not needed. Not even for what you like calling "unreasonable" players.
You call "after 4 successive passes they score the area score to the board as is" following only the letter of the law. I call it also following the spirit of the law. It is part of the spirit because it is the final solution for always avoiding adjudication, which Ing rules booklets advertise as "No adjudication". 4 successive passes while still suspecting stones are on the board requires both players before to have neglected their removal. When both players want to neglect their removal, then the rules simply acknowlegde this possibility. No problem. The problems (apart from the difficulty to interpret the rules correctly, i.e. what might be the score afterwards) start only when external persons like you want to impose their wish to replace what the rules already specify.
You say: "Following the letter of the law over the intent of the law is unreasonable." I say: "The letter of the law - as far as it can be interpreted - is always part of what constitutes the intention of the law." The EGF General Tournament Rules use a similar approach: The rules texts have a higher priority than the ambiguous concept of sportsmanship. Therefore one has to do one's best to interpret well even difficult rules texts.
Yes, simplicity is (almost) independent from reasonableness and so a quality in itself. This does not make the quality smaller though.
It was reasonable of my opponent to seek a dispute for the purpose of clarifying something unclear to him. It was not reasonable to start unrelated actions or to endanger a result change at all by not removing stones and not asking for verbal agreement on removal of stones before starting a dispute. From his strategic game resolution, it was unnecessary to postpone clarification until only a dispute would solve it.
I did not do any unreasonable actions: Removing breaths to remove opposing stones is reasonable and abides by the rules. Passing instead of pass-fighting is reasonable and abides by the rules. Asking to apply the rules scoring principle at the moment of scoring is reasonable and, IMO, abides by the rules. What abides by the rules does not abuse the rules.
In 2002 there was still some great uncertainty among European players of how to apply Ing game ending rules. Many players would behave as if performing Japanese style game ending procedures (which are much more frequent in European tournaments). Few players bothered to actually read and trying to understand the Ing rules. Hence many players were under the impression that a) resumption would be possible regardless of too many passes and b) removals might be done informally also after all those passes. So quite some players copied their usage of Japanese style game ending rules to Ing rules as if it did not matter.
What they created was a fake spirit of Ing rules while they did not bother to try perceiving the true spirit. Do not make the same mistake!
That Ing rules are ambiguous to quite some extent I do not consider any excuse for replacing them by some of many guessed spirits of them. Rather I try to disambiguify them as far as possible.
Concerning your basic principles:
"Why do we play go? To enjoy ourselves, and measure ourselves intellectually against others." Ok.
"What is the purpose of playing a (tournament) game? To find the stronger player." Same answer as to the previous question. Besides "stronger" is not precisely correct; rather it the player performing stronger during the tournament.
"Who is the stronger player? The player with the better tactical and strategic insight, given the time limits." The player with the better tractical, strategic, psychological insight under the given tournament context (tournament system, tournament rules, rules of play, time limits, etc. (The etc. is pretty relevant, too. E.g. schedule. E.g., room temperature. Some players play better / worse at a specific temperature.) I.e., where you omit the rules of play, I do include them in the context. Classical example: Some players are stronger under area scoring, others under territory scoring.
"What is the purpose of writing go rules? To facilitate the playing of go games." Rather I'd say: to inform about them openly.
"What is the intent of the rules? To allow us to find the stronger player without dispute." There are more important reasons. The most important being: To define the game precisely and completely.
Rules knowledge is part of playing strength. If you wanted to disagree: Study it empirically and you will notice the fact. What is more: rules knowledge is the most basic requirement for playing strength.
The 4-pass rule was not meant to encourage a player to make himself tactically and strategically weaker by altering the positional judgement in his opponent's favour by passing too early too often.
You say: "the 4 pass rule was not meant to enable a player to win the game when he has shown himself to be strategically and tactically weaker." I say: It requires the opponent's cooperation to let the 4-pass rule become relevant for positional judgement changes due to passes. The rule, like every rule of play, does not care for whether a player or his opponent makes a tactical / strategic mistake. An opponent has the right to make strategic mistakes by making a play and an opponent has the right to make strategic mistakes by making a pass. A player has the right to provoke the opponent's strategic mistakes by making a play and a player has the right to provoke the opponent's strategic mistakes by making a pass. Ing rules are not Korean rules or WAGC rules with their partially perfect passes. Passes under Ing rules are not required to be perfect play. The 4-pass rule gives both players the chance to play and pass tactically and strategically correctly shortly before the game end and gives both players the chance to play and pass tactically and strategically mistakenly. Ing rules are so proud of passes that the rules booklets show examples where passing is good tactical choice. One can and may win a game by passing well. Rather than being abuse, this is part of the playing skill.
From your principles, I do not see how you avoid the adventurous overinterpretation mentioned earlier.
Your principles try to be general principles. This overlooks the fact that Ing rules are more specialized than that. We also have to explain why Ing rules are, e.g., different from Japanese rules - also and especially on the philosophical / conceptual level. My reference to rules booklets and statements from insiders provide this specialized reference for the more specialized basic principles (to be spelled out explicitly some time later).
Cutting through most of the lengthy comment, I'd like to point out this one tiny bit, which seems to cut directly to the heart of the matter:
[the letter of the four pass law] is part of the spirit because it is the final solution for always avoiding adjudication.
It looks like everyone agrees that the purpose (or at least "one purpose") of the four pass law is to avoid adjudication.
"Adjudication" is a very long word, but I think this means that in case of a dispute, the life-and-death status of stones should be displayed by removing dead stones, and not by some ruling in the book, and never by a referee decision.
So, when the game was declared to be in game pause, was this purpose violated? Not at all! All dead stones got removed in the end.
On the other hand, would this purpose have been violated if the referee would have ruled otherwise? Oh yes it would! Some dead and easily removable stones would have been judged alive, only because a technicality in the rules says so.
So, the wording of the four pass rule appears to contain a loophole, which ironically allows a so-inclined player to use the letter of the law to defeat the purpose of the same very law itself.
Upholding the spirit of the law, even in the face of irony, is the job of referees and the appeals system. And as long as there are any ambiguities or inconsistencies in the rules texts, they will have a job to do. To me this reads: Always.
-Bass, 2010-02-24
Needless to say, I disagree with much of what you say but we have expressed that before. So let me concentrate on the new.
The rules in themselves should be clear or else have an official commentary by the rules authors that clarifies them or else have an official commentary by the body applying rules to tournaments that clarifies them or else have an explanation accompanying the arbitration body's decision. Once a clear commentary or else explanation is available, it is not necessary to make new explanations in every new dispute but previous explanations can be applied from the precedental explanation until a higher court decides or until the rules are changed.
Clear rules or else at least unclear rules with a clear accompanying explanation are needed.
tapir, my statement "I intended to win by passing." was not given and is not without context. Drawing conclusions from a single, isolated sentence is like asking as in the Bible: "Whose coin is that?" Answer: "Why do you set up a trap? Give god which is his and give the king which is his."
Instead of putting me into cross-examination for almost a decade now, why don't you discuss how rules should be like? I have given an answer: They should be clear. Ing style rules should be as clear as the Simplified Ing Rules. Instead of tolerating the EGF AGM's hiding of "simplified", why don't you join me in promoting the Simplified Ing Rules instead of the hopelessly difficult original Ing rules?
I think you have stated quite clearly in context that you intended to win by passing. Indeed your actions demonstrate that. You have further defended this position by saying that you saw nothing wrong with this. In appealing to the highest level of arbitration that further enforces the statement.
The full quotation is: "It is correct that - in terms of positional yose judgement - I was ca. 30 points behind. (I do not recall the exact value.) Before completion of that succession of passes that consisted of four passes, I did not intend to have a dispute; I did intend to win the game by passing. After that succession of four passes, the dispute arose when my opponent wanted to remove stones while I said that at that stage of the game no further removals were allowed to take place. So what you write is not essentially correct."
[EDIT]
The rules are so difficult to interpret that 20 years after their creation and 37 years since the first occurrence of Ing style rules there is not even a basic consensus on their roughly correct intention yet as soon as matters shall become a bit more precise than "area scoring, Ing fill-in counting, suicide allowed, there are board-plays and pass-plays, ko rules somehow resemble but are not superko".
[EDIT]
This thread is dangerously close to being a personal attack on Robert. I think the issues and general principles raised are interesting, and the discussion has the potential to be useful to other go players and tournament organisers. Therefore I'm reluctant to actually delete the thread. But I ask that all participants in this discussion should behave in a respectful manner.
I prefer to delete my comments myself, if necessary. However, I did not and do not intend to insult Robert. I just preferred to give some genuine feedback instead of those polite niceties which on a close reading reveal much worse feelings towards him.
Kind regards Tapir.
I agree that the general discussion is interesting. It is sometimes so general though that it might better be placed elsewhere like on subpages of Ing Rules.
This page turns into a big waste of time (facts, counterfacts, assumptions etc.) - however, by just stating which would have been the result under Robert's own Simplified Ing Rules - the discussion may be simplified.
Regards Tapir
The Simplified Ing Rules are not my own rules. They are a ruleset of the EGF. I merely wrote most of the text and official commentary but the EGF Rules Commission, then the EGF Committee adopted it. My usage of the word "superko" was substituted by "No Repetition", the phrase "until the result is fixed" was added and some wording and commentary details were altered before the rule text and commentary were adopted.
The dispute under the Simplified Ing Rules (if these were announced as the only valid rules of play):
- Alternate moving stops with two successive passes.
- For the sake of simulating the dispute, suppose then the players do not make an agreement about which regions (i.e. their stones) to remove.
- Alternate moving would continue. Suppose I would approach liberties of some opposing stones and remove them while my opponent would only pass.
- At some time, I would make a pass creating the next (second) two successive passes.
- Now the players would determine the scores. For the sake of simulating the dispute, suppose that I would suggest "The position is scored as is." while my opponent would suggest "These and those stones must still be removed.". Because of this, the players do not fix the result yet (do not fill and sign the result form yet).
- Rather the rule phrase "If they disagree until the result is fixed" and the commentary phrase "The condition about the "fixed result" allows to make and correct counting mistakes for determination of the scores" are invoked: They override the normal procedure that has at most two successions of passes. Now the game reenters the state of the game just after the first disagreement about all regions that shall be removed. Due to the rule phrase "alternate moving continues as if there had been no removals due to agreements", this reentering requires restoration of the position, i.e., the stones of my plays and the removals by them done after the first disagreement are restored as if they had not occurred.
- Since restoration of the position can be tricky, it is reasonable to assume that at latest now some referee is present.
- Next again alternate moving continues. I would approach liberties of some opposing stones and remove them. Presumably the presence of the referee would encourage my opponent to approach liberties of some of my stones and remove them.
- Afterwards we would make two more passes and then determine the scores.
Since under Simplified Ing Rules the expected removals cannot be avoided (in the potential presence of a referee), both players would probably rather have chosen to agree on the regions to be removed just after the first two successive passes of the game. The dispute would not have arisen at all.
Thank you for clarification. (I meant you've written most of them by saying your own. I know that they are adopted by the EGF.)
That is, you would have lost this game by about 30 points under (the then not yet existing) Simplified Ing Rules (which are mostly written by yourself), correct? But obviously you claimed a win under the Ing Rules 1991, because your opponent did not remove the stones thereby implying that they are alive.
Let us now reconsider the spirit and letter of the law question.
And I see only two possibilities:
1) You did write simplified rules which are not true to the spirit of the original.
or
2) You wrote simplified rules which are true to the spirit of the original, but then your claim for a win rested only on the "letter" and not on the "spirit" of the rules.
It is your choice.
+
And a final question - at the time of the dispute - did you already start to write what was to become the Simplified Ing Rules later?
Thank you Tapir
I choose possibility (3):
3) My claim for the win under the Ing 1991 Rules relied on my interpretation of the letter of the rules in context of all available and then known to me information from the Ing Foundation, i.e., by assuming the spirit to be "in case of doubt, play it out until the 4th of a succession of passes". The Simplified Ing Rules are not meant to capture the spirit of the Ing 1991 Rules as closely as possible but to create the best compromise of simplified Ing rules applicable well in EGF tournaments for EGF, referees, organizers and players.
The Simplified Ing Rules were written after, IIRC, the highest court decision. I think it must have been in winter 2002/2003.
The Simplified Ing Rules are not meant to capture the spirit of the Ing 1991 Rules as closely as possible...
How is this different from tapir's option 1?
tapir's options ask me something about the dispute, Ing 91 Rules and Simplified Ing Rules. So I prefer to answer something about all these aspects. Choosing option 1 would have meant to say nothing about the other aspects. (And then there is again the detail that I did not write the Simplified Ing Rules alone but only the draft(s) for most of them.)
Do you mind, if I add "The Simplified Ing Rules are not meant to capture the spirit of the Ing 1991 Rules" to the Simplified Ing Rules page?
Cheers Tapir.
PS As you interpret rules literally, I wonder why you can't take my postings at face value.
On the Simplified Ing Rules page, a statement like you would want to add would be out of context and seem a bit extreme. The rules capture at least the official Ing rules' basics.
If you formulated your postings more carefully, then I might want to take them at their "face value". Especially in threads related to the dispute, I am very careful with interpretations of messages to minimize the number of further misunderstandings. The Ing rules are already difficult enough in themselves; it is not necessary to further complicate matters by ambiguous contributions.
I told before, what I think about all this discussion - it is a big waste of time. But I think I should go forward and add this to the Simplified Ing Rules - as you can't deny that you literally wrote that. It may not wholly capture the spirit of your saying - but you wrote it, didn't you?
Cheers Tapir
No, tapir, you should not add such a statement to the Simplified Ing Rules page. It would be sad if the current argument were to spread to other pages.
There is no argument, as all people but Robert Jasiek have approximately the same opinion of the incident and dispute, but different ways to tell it. There is just a try to explain the meaning of spirit and letter of the law to Robert Jasiek by (fictional) example.
tapir, read all threads related to the dispute carefully and you will notice different opinions.
The majority opinion appears to assume that under Ing 1991 Rules removals would depend on hypothetical perfect play. Despite this being a majority opinion, nobody has clarified any of the following interpretation gaps:
a) How "can" can be interpreted to refer to hypothetically perfect play, b) what hypothetically perfect play is in case of beasts, c) how exactly breathless is related to hypothetically perfect play, d) why before the game ending passes, i.e. during the entire alternation, stones should not also always be removed immediately according to hypothetically perfect play, e) how to interpret the rules sentence "These are the only crieria for life and death.", f) how the then contradicting rules sentence "Disputes about taking away dead stones cannot be settled by special rulings." could be interpreted at all, g) why the - in Ing rules booklets - often stated intention to avoid all Japanese style special rulings but to use the idea "No Adjudication" could be fulfilled.
Instead of clarification, the majority prefers to bend the Ing 1991 Rules by inventing their desired spirit of go rules in general and letting it override the Ing 1991 Rules. Such does not prove or disprove anything about who was right or wrong in the dispute but rather indicates what the majority wants in a world of ideal go rules of their choice.
I am not interested in reading all this. Just tell me, did anybody but yourself publically endorse your point of view in this so-called rules dispute?
Cheers Tapir
Yes.
Who? Is it somewhere on rgg, SL, DGoB-Forum? Cheers Tapir
I do not recall all persons. Of one I recall the first name: Christian. Google has forgotten the related posts though.
BTW, if you want to know each and every detail from me, then you should read what I write and answer my questions, too. Instead you model the proto-typical representative of your opinion on the dispute: Making claims but not verifying them by the rules text.
Those who read all this, may be interested in http://www.godiscussions.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11114 :)
Seems like things are becoming clearer now and somebody might replace those 20 discussions by a WME.
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