Yes, I forget question mark and instead end with full stop?

Ke Jie excused himself from this tournament due to scheduling.

<totally silly comment> <conspiracy theory> Sounds suspiciously similar to the excuse the DeepMind used for AlphaGo not participating </conspiracy theory> </totally silly comment>

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Yeah, more hope for an AlphaGo/KJ match.

The selection process for China will include 8 players: No. 2-7 ranked players + Tang Weixing + Fan Tingyu. So the quality will certainly be there.

Interesting RE Ke Jie... As for choosing the Chinese player, whilst a selection tournament is probably the most fair, if they really want to win then taking into consideration the opposing players could increase the win chances, e.g. who has the best record against Park Junghwan? I had some memory Chen Yaoye tended to do well against him but when I checked go4go they are now pretty even (Chen 17 wins 16 loses).

I remember seeing stats on sina a couple of days ago, where they had stats of players who have won against park before in international tournaments, and while most of them had a less than 50% average as a whole against park, many of them do as well or even significantly better than park when it comes to tournaments in head to head matches.

Anyway, if we are to assume that the AI will win the tournament, then we can always say "well, our top human player didn't participate".

Ke Jie just denied rumours that he will be playing alphago during this match.

He also said that playing AlphaGo would be "song si", which literally means "gifting death", basically a phrase you use when you're way weaker than your opponent.

We all thought that AlphaGo is probably quite strong now, but with Ke Jie saying something like this... o_o

http://sports.sina.com.cn/go/2016-12-08 ... 4429.shtml

Fascinating indeed..that "song si"..But I believe he made that statement refering to his current "bad" state, didn't he?

One (weak) theory is that AlphaGo's opponent will be DeepZenGo, since they can play handicap game to show AlphaGo's 'massively stronger' version (I guess no top pro want to receive handicap stones from AI yet). But only one condition, DeepZenGo has to do well on World Go Championship, either winner or runner-up. Otherwise it'd be bad anchor.

About Ke Jie interview I read through Google translation (thanks deep learning!!) It's strange that he said he's in bad state despite just won Samsung Cup, may be he's worry too much about Bailing cup?

The neural translations still suck. I tried them a few times. I don't think it employed the latest technology.

Anyway, Ke Jie CLAIMS that he has no more pressure now that he won the samsung cup, because the agon kiriyama game doesn't really matter, if he loses, he'll just be contributing to the friendship between China/Japan (:D), and he already has 2 losses in the Bailing cup so he'll just YOLO it.

And at hokusai: Yes. but honestly, how much can condition do at that level? Not that much. I mean, even if he had a bad condition, he'd be stronger than Cho Chikun. The difference between bot and human is probably not that little.

Finally a human translated news.
http://m.yicaiglobal.com/news/5179717.html

Thanks again, pookpooi!

Apparently the human translation is somewhat flawed … from the comments to my Facebook share of this article:

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I recall that upon a question Fujisawa Shuko once expressed his wish to play go against God and said that 2 stone handicap would be probably enough for an even match. Taking his meaning -under his assumption- it can be concluded that AI will never be able to surpass top human player by giving him 2 stones. Today human #1 Ke Jie seems to be daunted by AlphaGo. There shouldn't be even a 1 stone difference between them but comparing Ke's recent humble approach to the self-reliant one at several months ago I wonder what made him change his mind actually?

i think go players underestimate the difference between them and perfect play, while programmers and non-goplayers overestimate the difference.

I think AlphaGo can likely give Ke Jie 2 stones now with a decent chance (say 40%+). But It probably won't be able to give more than 3 stones, ever.

However, even if a player is just 1 point worse than perfect play, he'll lose 100% of the time. At their level, a small difference could mean a huge ELO/winrate difference.

Ke Jie beat Kono Rin in the Japan-China Agon cup. It felt rather more difficult for him than I expected with his aggressive amashi strategy but he won by resign after doing better in the first bit of fighting you could say he was on the front foot.

An oxymoron, surely? Amashi is rope-a-dope (i.e. on the back foot, not the front).

I don't mean aggressive as in trying to kill the opponent's stones, I mean it in terms of being active and earnest in taking away the opponent's territory. He was thus on the back foot and being attacked for most of the game. But then near the end there was finally a fight with some weak stones of Kono and he switched from back to front foot and delivered the winning punch.

The reason it felt more difficult for him than you expected is because he misread the right side. He thought it was supposed to be a seki, not ko. He said he had a really good position, until the ko happened, and it was like going straight from heaven to hell. If Kono Rin made ko threats against the bottom instead of the top, Ke Jie would be in a very bad position. But luckily for Ke jie, Kono Rin played at the top and couldn't kill Ke Jie's group

Will we ever see the result of qualification round of both Korea and China?
I cheer for Mi Yuting and Shin Jinseo, both are hottest rising star right now.
Also, Zen's progress seems stagnate at this moment, so it'll probably won't win, but will give an exciting match nonetheless.

It's official: Mi Yuting for China and Park Junghwan for Korea.