There was a question on reddit a few days ago about the strength of Zen 7 (commercial version) compared to top pros.

Zen 7 is really struggeling to understand this interesting fighting game!

Conclusion: Ke Jie and Lee Sedol are way stronger than Zen 7. (Yeah, Captain Obvious. But if anybody is interested he can try to run his own analysis of this game with Zen or Leela and he can experience the difference first hand )

Ke Jie lost to Fan Tingyu in the quarterfinal of Chinese Qisheng (Kisei) competition.

One thing to note for this competition is that Lian Xiao has advanced to the semifinal for the right to challenge the current Qisheng holder Zhou Ruiyang, and Lian Xiao is already holding both Tianyuan and Mingren titles at the moment. Gu Zihao is also continuing his recent form to advance by beating Shi Yue and Tuo Jiaxi.

What do you think of this game?

Not much discussion here, but the game pookpooi posted without explanation was Ke Jie losing online with 2 stones (but giving komi) against the latest version of the Chinese program Fine Art.

Over on reddit there was an interesting translation of some of his comments, a few highlights below.

i think black 29 sets a very bad bullying example to younger players, so they do that sort of stubborn belligerence against me... and it usually works for them! (boo hoo). So i'm very pleased to see Fine Art giving the bully a taste of his own medicine

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i shrink, therefore i swarm

Ke Jie won a (even shorter) rematch on 2 stones (before those comments), these games are not high quality with such misreads leading to early resignation!



@djhbrown: What would you suggest as a non-bullying move? Extend there is important to get some liberties and strengthen the stones.

Time dims the memory, so i can't give chapter and verse, but as a young man i was much taken by the observations of Ishii Press writers that Go was a game of delicate beauty, in which patience is a virtue.

Both of those 2-stones games between Fine Art and Ke Jie are the antithesis of that aesthetic, both sides manifesting thuggish, impatient, violent belligerence: kill or be killed.

In the second game (call that a game? it's more like Sumo wrestling!), i was dismayed to see Fine Art acting like a bully too; so it was good to see Ke Jie getting his revenge.

In marked contrast to the school-bully playing styles displayed by both sides in both those two games, Alfie0 manifests a more studied approach, a Monet of the board with a refined sense of the aesthetic, dancing around Master with the grace of Mohammed Ali: float like a butterfly; sting like a bee.

In the first game, what should black do instead of stubbornly trying to kill both sides by descending to the second line - the line of defeat? And only succeeding in making himself heavier than he already was, even if it gained a couple of liberties and looks underneath to both left and right.

Were i a boxer able to issue a knockout uppercut, i would be up there with them, instead of skulking around the back of a small room at the back, muttering to myself.

i don't know much about art, but i know what i like.

Instead of trying to set me up for a fall, if you were a scholar of Go and really wanted to know what's better, you would ask the Moon Goddess Alfie0 - i expect she knows.

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i shrink, therefore i swarm

I did not. I was puzzled that you picked out move 29 as the bully move (I would have said the aggression or bullying started a few moves earlier) so wanted to know what you thought was a reasonable move. I thought you might suggest p18, get the corner and sacrifice the 2 stones. It's inconsistent with the previous aggressive play, but does at least achieve something in a more peaceful way, though you probably need to add another move at s15 to consolidate the corner.

If black wanted to live he could have done so instead of playing r18, but then white can live comfortably at r18 and black's play doesn't really make sense and hurts his top left corner.

out

Ke Jie enters the scene at 6m44s in:



i am frankly amazed that a champ can be such a chump - but not as big a chump as the rest of us - the real sting in the tail starts at 9m45s, after the fat ladies stop singing (if you can call that singing!).

let's see if Swim can help out Ke Jie:


white's naked aggression seems to be working for him (i call Fine Art "him" because he is Jue Yi = Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle), for the shadow of the stone he just added to the cut reaches out to just touch the shadow of the white wall - and where shadows just meet, their clusters are working efficiently.

black's 4 stones in the top right don't look right to me either (too thin), especially as the sole white stone on the right has plenty of room for manouevre, but hey, what do i know??

let's pretend that both they and the white stone can survive, and that overall the game is fairly balanced. So black should playsafe.

as black, i would be looking to try to keep sente (which in my dictionary means "the initiative" and doesn't mean "forcing" like everyone else seems to think) so i can hop in between white's two too-uncoordinated stones at the bottom.

Black has more prospective territory already, so it would be a matter of hanging on to that advantage by denying white the chance to catch up, so neutralising the bottom would be a safe strategy.

Swim, on the other hand, sees it a little differently to me; she reckons the focus is on reducing white's top left moyo by playing on or across the green line.

But we both agree that Ke Jie's idea of chucking away the sente he has to try and save two worthless stones, presumably in the vain hope of attacking white's 3 stronger ones on the top right is worse than a complete waste of time, it's sticking his Rs into his own face.

Vanity comes before a fall, except when you're playing me, when it's me that trips over his own feet because i was never any good at details so am hopeless at Go. Even after falling down to the same tactic in this game: https://www.lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=15395, i (black) still don't know whether white was being a bully or a donkey. I suspect the latter, but as he succeeded, that makes me an even bigger donkey to let him get away with it. Help!

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i shrink, therefore i swarm

To the complaints about "violence", "bullying", and "thuggishness" in Go, I can only repeat the well-known saying "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Ke Jie beat Fu Chong 6p in 78 moves. Round of 16 of some event, mostly Chinese players but also Choi Cheolhan so maybe Chinese league finals or just some event Koreans did really badly in? He lost to Tang Weixing in round of 8 though.

This is the Chinese Southwest Qiwang tournament. Choi Cheolhan is a guest player because he has been representing a league A team in that region for many years.

Chinese Southwest Qiwang (中国围棋西南棋王赛) is a regional tournament for Chinese players from southwest China (covering three provinces Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuang & the municipality Chongqing). In practice, players born in that region, or those representing league teams in that region, or indeed anyone the sponsor considered fit, are invited to play.

Here's the game, quite a few AlphaGo-esque moves from Ke Jie:
- 6 as ye olde players would have told us, approaching 3-4 is bigger than answer approach to 4-4.
- 16 (instead of e17 connect)
- 30 and 36 attaches AG likes.
- 44 don't be afraid of them double approaching your 4-4, particularly as k3 makes lower side boring.
- 58 tesuji not invented by AG, but this kind of bad aji is one reason it probably doesn't like the b4 slide.

Ke Jie had some tough time in recent months. Across seasons he lost 6 games in a row in the Chinese A league. Today he fought really hard to beat Gu Zihao to break that losing streak - very exciting game.

Ke's slump continues, lost to Japanese wonderkid Shibano Toramaru 7p in the China vs Japan Ryusei match. Might even lose his #2 spot on goratings soon.

Some good news for Ke Jie at last: he just beat Park Junghwan in the 5th round of the Chinese league, and as black as well! (white won 14 of their 15 games to date)

Ke Jie won both of his games in the Quzhou-Lanke cup against Li Qincheng and Jiang Weijie, respectively. His next opponent is against the young Liao Yuanhe 6P, who I believe is 0-3 against Ke Jie.

Ke also just won his game against Shi Yue in the 6th round of the A-Leagues as well and cut into Park Junghwan's lead slightly. The last time they were this "close" was around February I believe. Hopefully, this is a sign that Ke Jie is regaining his form.

Ke Jie now has a 2-game losing streak again after losing in the first round of Mingren against Tong Mengcheng and then the 7th round of A-League against Lee Sedol. However, Park Junghwan has lost 2 in a row as well after Chen Yaoye beat him in A-League.

Lian Xiao continues his great form and has now reached his highest rating ever.

Ke Jie beat Shi Yue today in the final match of the knockout tournament to determine the four finalists of the Longxing.

In the game, Ke Jie invaded the 3-3 on the 3rd move!