Pros inspired by AlphaGo

[Uberdude]

This game from Zhou Ruiyang, who was one of the 9ps who worked with DeepMind to comment the Alphago games, against Shi Yue looks very much inspired by AlphaGo to me. Black's (Shi's) active Chinese opening with the turn instead of cut after 3-3 was like the AlphaGo self-play games. The most notable single move though has got to be Zhou's attachment on the Chinese 3-4 stone which was trumpetted as an innovation of AlphaGo in it's third self-play game. That's actually an exaggeration as it's not a new move and pros have played it quite a few times before (even in quiet positions), but if AlphaGo thinks it should be considered a joseki and standard way to play against the Chinese then that would be new, but it's played/released so few games we can't make such a conclusion. Anyway, that move and the subsequent tenuki were rather interesting, as was the way Zhou settled his group in a rather AlphaGo-esque way (whilst making another weak group and counterattack with the p9 cut).



The similar AlphaGo game is below. My understanding of why Shi (black) ignored the kick to atari the attachment is because if you stand then white plays the outside hane like in the AlphaGo analysis and builds a sente wall and then pincers below the hoshi and the kick becomes a good exchange because it stops the attachment and counter-hane to settle. One query I'd have with that line though is can white really hane in sente building that wall, if you have kicked then maybe black would ignore that and extend to the side hoshi, as the atari is not so big.