Ke Jie, the most abstract Go player on the Internet, and even the most popular war hawk "Zhan Lao" in the Go live broadcast industry today, cannot cover up the glory of this innate abstract holy body who is said to have brushed the rocket in the red archway. And this abstract genius who once held eight world championships and was known as the "Cupping King",Now he is only one step away from becoming the "Nine-Crown Champion" - the third round of the 29th LG Cup World Chess Championship finals. But this final turned out to be an extremely abstract game—abstract in every sense of the word.
In April 2024, the 29th LG Cup World Chess Championship officially opened. After nearly a year of competition, Ke Jie fought all the way to the finals from January 20 to January 23, 2025, and his opponent was South Korean player Byun Sang-il. In the first game on January 20, Ke Jie had already won his first victory. If he wins again in the second game on January 22, the title of "Nine Crowns" will be won by Ke Jie in advance.
In fact, in the second game on January 22, Ke Jie had already gained a huge advantage, but the chess game was not over yet. No one could tell the final outcome. If the two players couldn't keep up, they would use their own, ordinary, and expert moves to reverse the outcome. Don't tell me, Korean chess player Byun Sang-il really has a magical move. He raised his hand to the referee and pointed in the direction of Ke Jie, indicating that Ke Jie had committed a foul.
Subsequently, the referee came to seal the set and after discussion announced that Ke Jie had lost. The reason is "a foul on the grapevine". It is worth mentioning that in the finals of the Go World Series, Ke Jie has never been awarded a loss due to a grapevine foul. To a certain extent, Ke Jie has indeed become the first player.
Picture source: Bilibili@China Go Association
Specifically, according to the rules of the game, when chess players perform "lifting", they should put the chess pieces into the box lid. "Tizi" refers to taking out the opponent's "airless" pieces in Go, while the box lid is the lid of the chess box to store the Go pieces. However, during the game, Ke Jie failed to lift the piece in accordance with the regulations twice. The first time he was warned on the spot by the referee and fined twice, and the second time he was reported by the chess player Bian Xiangyi. After being deemed foul by the referee twice, the result of this game was that Ke Jie lost.
And all of this was broadcast live. From Ke Jie lifting the ball, to Ke Jie getting up to drink water, to opponent Bian Xiangyi reporting Ke Jie for violating the rules, and finally to the referee sealing the set, all actions were witnessed by countless netizens - many people felt that this situation of being awarded a loss for not lifting the ball in accordance with the regulations is unreasonable no matter how you think about it.
For example, Alpha Dog cannot put a grape in the lid of a box, so rigid silicon-based organisms are destined to be unable to defeat carbon-based organisms that can figure out the three laws of robotics.
For another example, under this kind of rules, everyone is qualified to compete with Ke Jie - as long as they wait for Ke Jie to kill themselves, and then let the lid of Ke Jie's chess box be filled, they can steadily rely on the rules to win.
And recalling the "Game of Tactics" that often appeared in Ke Jie's live broadcast room with the title "Only Play Go", perhaps we have to follow the international pace and come up with an innovation of a ceremonial nature.
But whether it was the pearlescent gauntlet or the spiritual wind blowing his hand, it was not as good as the magical hand of his final opponent Bian Xiangyi. Go has always been regarded as a gentleman's art. The older generation of chess players also have the character and magnanimity of a gentleman, and they must win in an upright manner.
However, Bian Xiangyi took advantage of the opportunity when Ke Jie got up and was no longer in front of the chessboard, and secretly raised his hand to report his opponent with a move called Dahuang Prison Finger. Such ungentlemanly behavior has also become the target of ridicule and criticism from netizens.
As netizens began to discuss Ke Jie's unfair verdict, relevant news quickly hit the hot lists on major platforms. The speed and the wide scope of the impact are truly amazing.
Weibo hot search ranking trends and Tieba hot lists on the afternoon of January 22, 2025
I have to say that judging from the time when the rules were formulated, this does have a "customized" feel. This rule of "the grape must be placed in the lid of the box" that caused Ke Jie's foul was added in August last year - and the 29th LG Cup World Chess Championship officially started as early as April last year. Looking at it this way, it really looks like a hot update was suddenly applied during the game. Chess player War Eagle also spoke out about this, believing that this rule has become irrelevant, distracting and constraining players - should chess players always think about "Where did I mention my last move?"
Even Korean netizens believe that such a sentence is somewhat unreasonable: "Habits are absolutely unchangeable. Can you quit it in one day?"
In fact, there are indeed regional differences in this rule. Chess players from different regions will naturally have different habits when playing chess. When they are highly concentrated on thinking, they will uncontrollably use their original habits and muscle memory to improve moves. According to an interview by Modern Express with Ding Bo, deputy director of the Jiangsu Chess Academy and head coach of the provincial Go team, the Japanese and Korean Go circles often have the habit of placing chess pieces inside the chess cover. This habit is closely related to the difference between the "numbering method" commonly used in the Chinese Go circles and the "numbering method" commonly used in the Japanese and Korean Go circles.
Since the "numerical method" requires all these chess pieces to be filled back on the chessboard at the end of the game, great emphasis is placed on the placement of the chess pieces. It is for this reason that chess players' playing habits are inconsistent. Chess player Zhan Ying also said in the live broadcast room that this rule added in August last year was actually a belated historical issue. There had been similar disputes earlier, but this time it received special attention.
Many netizens believe that the South Korean organizer is using this rule to deliberately make things difficult for others in this competition: both players are right-handed, but when the organizer placed the chessboard, they placed the two chessboard box lids on one side - for Ke Jie, this is an extremely awkward left side.
What makes netizens have such doubts and express opinions is exactly that clichéd topic that is often ridiculed on the Internet - South Korea's sportsmanship. For example, "turn any game except a wrestling match into a wrestling match", or the four thinnest books in the world: "Korean Sports Spirit", "American History", "British Cookbook" and "Italian Heroic Epic". In short, in many people's stereotypes and even in many objective facts, South Korea is such a country without sportsmanship - the penalty suffered by Ke Jie in the second game further confirmed this. So going one step further, many netizens believed that even changing the rules midway was an intentional move by the Korean organizers and a deliberate "trap."
It was also because of this bad memory that after Ke Jie accepted the penalty, the audience in the live broadcast room was furious. Many comments in the barrage were fierce, thinking that the Chinese Go Association was "waxy" and did not dare to argue with reason. There are also people who are disappointed with the Chinese Go Association and wrote words such as "disbanded" in the barrage.
What added fuel to the fire was that the account of the China Go Association at Station B actually responded with a barrage in the live broadcast room, "Rules are rules, and they were not decided today." This immediately made netizens find an excellent outlet for their anger.
Therefore, in the video comment area of the Chinese Go Association account, this classic sentence "Rules are rules, and they are not decided today" instantly became a new bible and was copied and pasted by netizens.
In addition, there are countless turtle Emojis refreshed here. As of the completion of this article, the comment area of the video "Ke Jie was fined 2 points for violating Korean Go rules, and the second game went against the wind" has received more than 30,000 comments, almost all of which are netizens' attacks on the Chinese Go Association.
Finally, netizens even picked up other statements made by the Chinese Go Association account, which not only included discussions on rules, but also made jokes such as "wine jar king", which made netizens wonder whether this was a case of private use of the official account.
Faced with relevant doubts, the Chinese Go Association explained the relevant situation on the WeChat public account on the evening of January 22. In the explanation, in addition to clarifying the situation of the game, the Chinese Go Association also stated that it had lodged a complaint with South Korea, believing that the "pass" and "penalty" did not match. It also emphasized that we will take seriously any behavior of staff using official accounts to express personal subjective comments without permission. But for most people, this explanation is completely unconvincing - until now, under the first video of the Chinese Go Association's B station account, the turtle Emoji with the timestamp of "just now" is still constantly being refreshed. After the finals ended on January 23, the live replays automatically uploaded by the account were actively deleted after receiving thousands of comments.
Under such circumstances, discussions and jokes about this abstract competition on the Internet have become more intense. Of course, this is traceable and inseparable from Ke Jie himself. As mentioned at the beginning, Ke Jie has always been a genius in abstraction. Abstraction has brought him huge traffic and a large number of fans who are well versed in e-sports culture and abstract culture.
Coincidentally, in the e-sports circle, one of the most trafficked games, "League of Legends", is also often dominated by Koreans. The e-sports circle already has sufficient experience in "fighting against South Korea". In the post forum after the second game of the final, the most discussed forum for this incident was not only the Go forum, but also the pressure-taking forum that mainly discussed the "League of Legends" tournament.
Following this, many game memes, e-sports memes, and abstract memes were flexibly used in this incident. For example, in the sentence "Kamu four", in a literal sense, Ka comes from Bian Xiangyi's nickname "Kazi brother", "mu" comes from "mu" in Go terminology, and "four" is the total number of penalties Ke Jie received. But together, it is the black nickname for Faker, the professional player of the next door "League of Legends": subject four.
For another example, in criticizing the account of the Chinese Go Association, netizens also played the "Korean Shield" in the professional competition of "League of Legends" and the "66 of 9" meme of the well-known player 369.
And this stereotyped article of "Is there an easy way to win over Ke Jie" followed by "Yes, brothers have it" is a classic quote from a certain "Honor of Kings" anchor.
In other words, Ke Jie has attracted a large number of deep Internet users who have their own memes, and the abstract physique he created has also made more netizens willing to play related memes. Therefore, they were able to amplify the dissemination energy of Ke Jie-related information by several orders of magnitude through jokes. In this case, the sentence suffered by Ke Jie was inherently indignant with "unfair accusations" and "double standard accusations." Coupled with the impression of "Korean sportsmanship" that has always been of concern, it eventually triggered an exponential effect, allowing this incident to spread so quickly.
And this kind of spread is indeed rapid enough. In less than one afternoon, the news of Ke Jie's defeat has received enough attention on both video websites and Weibo posts. This has also caused this incident to go out of the circle again and again. Even people who don't usually pay attention to the Go circle will come to curse after hearing the news that Ke Jie was sentenced to lose.
Obviously, under the influence of the above factors, the attention of this final battle must be huge-this seems to have been given special significance. This is indeed the case. In the live broadcast room of chess player War Eagle at Station B, the peak number of viewers even reached 230,000.
Ke Jie started the last game with tremendous pressure.
But even with so much attention, this final battle is still unsettled, and new abstract images have been contributed, making this abstract game even more abstract. For example, countless barrage frames found that at 10:40 Beijing time, in the 52nd move of the game, South Korean player Byun Sang-il's operation process was "Rasp - press the bell - put the lid in the box" instead of "Rat - put the lid in the box - press the bell", but the referee was indifferent to this detail.
When Ke Jie once again committed a foul by not putting the raisin into the box lid due to habit issues, the Korean referee found the coach and translator of the Chinese Go Association, and the coaching staff rushed to the scene for discussion. But when the referee was closing the set, he paused the game after Ke Jie made a move and it was Korean chess player Byun Sang-il's turn to think.
It should be noted that Ke Jie has a huge disadvantage in this game. The only advantage he has is "time". The referee's closing of the game provided a gap for South Korean chess player Byun Sang-il to take a long test, further reducing Ke Jie's time advantage. This is obviously unfair, and even makes people doubt whether there will be a situation where "the outside world reveals the AI's first choice."
After two hours of closing the game, the referee team finally made a penalty and determined that Ke Jie had committed a foul and required a two-eye penalty. Ke Jie and the Chinese Go Association did not agree with this penalty - after all, the Chinese Go Association had protested against this rule the day before. Therefore, under such an unreasonable penalty, Ke Jie and the Chinese Go Association chose to withdraw from the competition. South Korean chess player Byun Sang-il won the so-called "customized" championship with a 2-1 record despite not winning a game, which also brought an end to this unprecedented abstract Go final. More details and questions may not be clear until Ke Jie and the staff of the Chinese Go Association return to China.
But the matter is not over yet. The abstraction of this final is not limited to the game. On the Internet, as the entire abstract final came to an end, the discussion of the incident further increased. After such a heated discussion, everything seemed to evolve into the classic chaos that we are familiar with.
Weibo hot search rankings and Tieba hot lists on the afternoon of January 23, 2025
A lot of excessive and out-of-control emotions spewed out wantonly, attacking everything - not even the Korean Chess Association and those unreasonable rules that should have been questioned.
For example, War Eagle, who objectively explained the difference between "numbering method" and "numbering method" in the live broadcast room, was labeled as "Bian Ying" by barrage to clear the ground for Korean chess players and the Korean Chess Association.
For another example, there have been a lot of squabbling feasts in the post forums between those who "drew out boomerangs to make speeches to prove that Ke Jie is talented, immoral and does not respect the rules" and the irritable old man who "swears every KRD he sees". With thousands of replies, I don’t know how many people’s experience continued to increase by 3.
From a rational perspective, imperfections in rules and enforcement are still the focus of our attention. Reasonable rules of competitive sports should allow players to focus on the event itself - as a world-wide authoritative competition, it also needs rules with stable standards that are recognized by the vast majority of people.
But in this competition, the behavior of the Korean Chess Association was indeed inadequate. On the one hand, this unreasonable rule goes against the personal habits of chess players from different regions, and it was suddenly updated during the competition schedule; on the other hand, there was an incident in the final that made Ke Jie red-hot on the spot: "The referee closed the game while the opponent was thinking." This execution method is also essentially unfair.
According to a statement issued by the Chinese Go Association on the evening of January 23, it was precisely because of the inappropriate timing of the interruption by the Korean referee that Ke Jie was unable to continue the game. After applying for a rematch to no avail, Ke Jie and the Chinese Go Association chose to withdraw from the competition because they did not accept the result. And this also shows the lack of rules - there is no unified standard to ask the referee when to interrupt, and there is no unified standard to judge whether a replay can be replayed.
Therefore, the core of the problem is that a global competition is implemented by different organizers in different countries with different standards and rules, and even the details of these regulations have not been standardized. Under such circumstances, it is inevitable that some thunderstorm events will occur due to subjective or objective reasons.
Previously, similar incidents were limited to the Go circle and did not attract the attention of the entire network. But this time, this unprecedented abstract final encountered a unique abstract genius, which made countless netizens outside the Go circle see this.
Perhaps, with such a huge public outcry, the revision and improvement of relevant regulations should be put on the agenda earlier - at least for the Chinese Go Association, which has been criticized tens of thousands of times, this really needs to be taken seriously.
After all, no one wants to see the scene where "the winning chess piece is really not on the chessboard" happen again.