Go has a insanely long history. According to the Chinese classic 'Bowuzhi,' it's estimated that Emperor Yao invented it for his son around 2300 BC.
Since the game has been around forever, the rules branched out and vary slightly by country.
In Korea and Japan, the score is calculated based on your territory plus the stones you captured. In other words, 'captured stones' directly affect the win or loss.
Here, 'territory' (house) refers to the number of empty intersections surrounded by your stones.
"Captured stones" are the ones you take off the board after surrounding the opponent's pieces like that.
On the flip side, China calculates the score based on territory plus the stones left alive on the board. Basically, captured stones don't change the score at all.
Because of this, in Korea and Japan, players put captured stones in the lid of their stone container so the opponent can easily see the count.
But since captured stones don't matter in China, they often don't care about them—sometimes even tossing them back into the opponent’s container.
This stone-counting issue actually caused a messy incident back in 2004.
Korea's Kim Kang-geun (4-dan) played China's Huang Yizhong (6-dan). Huang just handed the captured stones back to Kim. Kim figured, "Oh, he's just picking up dropped stones for me," and moved on.
The game turned into a suffocating half-point match, and that's where things went south.
Kim Kang-geun, who was missing one captured stone in his count, thought, "Oh? I won?"
Meanwhile, Huang Yizhong was like, "Wait, I won?"
They were supposed to have a rematch, but Kim didn't show up, so Huang took the win by default.
Even after that, Chinese pros kept ignoring the rule to keep captured stones visible in Korean-rule tournaments. Finally, on Nov 8, 2024, a new rule regarding stone storage was established in Korea. (They notified the Chinese Weiqi Association, meaning Ke Jie definitely knew about it. There was a 2.5-month grace period for objections.)
Ke Jie failed to realize the weight of this rule and didn't put his captured stones on the lid...
He got his 1st warning (2-point penalty + warning).
Then, an hour and a half later, he captured another stone and again failed to put it on the lid.
In Chinese Go, captured stones aren't a big deal, so Ke Jie had a habit of just leaving them wherever. He was probably so focused on the game that he forgot the warning and just played by habit.
Ultimately, Ke Jie was hit with a forfeit loss.
Basically, it was a massive "accident" caused by the different scoring systems between Korea, China, and Japan.
The wild part is that this was a world final with a $300k prize pool lol. Byun Sang-il’s head-to-head record against Ke Jie was total garbage (0 wins, 7 losses) before this.
Here's Korean #2 Park Jung-hwan checking the count in the captured stone lid. [2025/12/29 Kisung Cup Semi-final. Park vs. Dang Yifei]. Pros check these counts all the time. Saying stone management isn't necessary is pure BS.
"Users are debating whether Ke Jie's forfeit was due to his own arrogance and bad habits or if the manual stone-counting rule is just a fossil that needs to be digitized. There's also some tea about the Chinese Go association pressuring Korea to scrap the rule after the incident."
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