On 22 and 23 January, Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, saw several trending hashtags regarding Go (the traditional board game, sometimes called Weiqi) player Ke Jie and his latest game at the 29th LG Cup finals in South Korea. Ke is one of the best-known professional Go players in China. He is also known to be outspoken and is no stranger to controversies.
This time, the controversy started when Ke was reported to have not placed the captured stones in the designated stone container lid twice and was penalised for it. One reason for the controversy is that the rule was very recently revised, while the other is both time-outs for dealing with the issue were during Byun Sang-il, Ke’s opponent’s turn, which Ke found unfair. After his suggestion for a rematch was denied by the Korea Baduk Association, Ke left the game in protest and Made Byun a champion with no wins.
On Weibo, the topic “Ke Jie is not playing” (#柯洁不比了#) shot to the top of the Hot Search list with a whopping 350 million views. The match had a particularly high stake for Ke as this was the first time he reached the finals in an international tournament which could make him the first Chinese Go player to win 9 world titles, or “Nine-Crown King” (九冠王). The Chinese Weiqi Association released a statement to say that it does not accept the results of the game.
A later hashtag, “Ke Jie changes Weibo bio to World Go ‘Nine-Crown King’” (#柯洁微博备注改为世界围棋九冠王#), reached second place on the list with 59.99 million views. Many believe that the new penalties were introduced to target Chinese players as they do not have the habit of retaining dead stones like their Korean and Japanese counterparts. Outraged netizens on the platform expressed support for the apparent protest of the LG Cup and said Ke Jie gave a better response than CWA’s.
