Life In 19x19

I was expecting AlphaGo to win, but Lee really seemed to believe in himself. It was really bad watching him for the last ~15 minutes, you could see the pain and sadness on his face whenever the camera went to him. Pretty damn rough, really emotive. His hands were shaking too, I am not certain, but ...

Is this really getting that much interest and publicity? I don't have a TV or subscribe to a newspaper so I get all my news online. I have not seen a single reference to it outside of the go community. Quite some coverage in German newspapers resp. their online presences, e.g. Süddeutsche Zeitung ...

Lee's comments after game 1 :

Initial feelings after the game:
"I was so surprised because I didn't think I would lose. About the game, I messed up in the fuseki stage and wasn't able to recover throughout the game. I didn't imagine its play would be this perfect. Very surprised indeed."

About ...

Congratulations AlphaGo!

Some quick thoughts after game 1 (I watched the game on and off so this is not a thorough impression):

1. Lee clearly seemed to underestimate AlphaGo when he went strait to fighting very early in the game.

2. AlphaGo's evaluation skills seemed even better than Lee. It ...

CutFirstThinkLater, it surprises me that the result that you think has the highest probability differs from what you would bet money on.

Because I feel both sides have basically similar chances of winning with Lee only slightly ahead, and despite this, the overwhelming majority of the Go ...

Has anybody found a place where we can bet real dollars, pounds, or euros on the outcome? I have as much interest in Bitcoin as I do Facebook, that is to say, none.

But if somebody wanted to bet even money, I'd bet a bit on Lee Sedol to win. And if somebody wanted to give me good odds, I'd bet a ...

Almost every post about it I've seen and every conversation I've heard has been about "oh, cool, look at what computers can beat humans at now, Skynet is coming" not "oh, that game looks interesting can someone teach me how to play."

I do think these "Skynet" comments are an expression of certain ...

We often talk about how to get more people interested in go, and suddenly a publicity bonanza has fallen into our laps. AlphaGo's success has moved Go from *blank stare* to "Isn't that the game where computers have just become competitive?" It seems that this might be the best opportunity since ...

In top pro games, there are unquantifiable 'twists' and 'shakes'

Too bad Lee Sedol does not explain what he means here. (Instead he already hides it while saying it: "unquantifiable".)
He means tipping the game off balance and making it complicated and chaotic when things don't go one's way ...

Thanks for the nice translation! But I think I'll have to make a small correction to this part:


He later said:

“사실 판후이 2단과 둔 기보를 보면 두 점 접바둑을 둬서도 이길 수 있다. 그러나 ‘알파고’가 매월 수만 판의 바둑을 두면서 스스로 학습한다기에 선바둑으로 높여 준 것”이라며 “하지만 그것이 지금 나를 이길 수 있다는 소리는 절대 아니다”

("Actually, looking at Fan Hui 2p's game records ...

From what I understand AlphaGo's knowledge of pro games are mainly used for reading ahead(predicting moves) and selecting candidate moves. Since those two compose a bulk of one's playing skill, I think it's likely that AlphaGo's skill will be stuck at 'human level' for quite some time, until its ...

As someone who hasn't grown up with any of these four but tried them all (I grew up playing Janggi) I guess I can cast a neutral vote, and to me it's definitely Shogi. Because of the 'capture and drop anywhere' rule its complexity level is almost on par with Go and far more dynamic than any other ...

So it took him 6 years to get from strong amateur to pro 1 dan (1962 to 1968) and about 12 more years to start winning the big titles(1968 to 1980). AlphaGo has done the "easy" bit - getting to a low ranked professional, the hard work is getting from there to where Lee Sedol is

Interesting POV ...

There was some discussion about that on reddit some time ago.

Verdict: They don't think it's AlphaGo.

I seriously doubt Aja Huang was serious when he said all the games of "deepmind" were played by himself. AFAIK he's a 6d(european?) which I don't think is strong enough to pull out deepmind's ...

[Please move this topic to Computer Go section]

I see your point, but since this topic is closely related to the many Yi vs AlphaGo threads here (of which the number will probably explode next week - after all, this match is the biggest event in professional go right now - one can argue it's also ...