American Go E-Journal » 2016 » March

After a loss in Game 4 of the Google DeepMind Challenge, and a move early on that looked like a mistake, but could have been a creative and effective new move, AlphaGo on Tuesday won Game 5 against the legendary Lee Sedol 9P. This final game of the match was close until the very end, with commentators going back and forth about who was leading. But after 280 moves, down a couple points, Lee resigned, giving the Google AI program a 4-1 match record and achieving a major milestone for artificial intelligence a decade earlier than many predicted.

“It was difficult to say at what point AlphaGo was ahead or behind,” said English commentator Michael Redmond 9P. “AlphaGo made what looked like a mistake with move 48, similar to the mistake in Game Four in the middle of the board. After that AlphaGo played very well in the middle of the board, and the game developed into a long, very difficult end game…AlphaGo has the potential to be a huge study tool for us professionals, when it’s available for us to play at home.” Korean commentator Kim Seongryong 9P added that “Just like the scientists, go players are always trying to find new methods and approaches. And we are so happy when we find them. This Challenge Match has brought us go players to new areas we’ve never explored. We are now seeing a lot more interest in playing go. And even in one week, I feel like my go playing has improved.”

“I just want to say thanks to the entire DeepMind AlphaGo team,” said Chris Garlock, Managing Editor of the American Go E-Journal, and the other half of the English commentary team. “This match… the drama, the historic aspect, the quality of the games, the brilliance of AlphaGo, the brilliance of Lee Sedol, and then the amount of media coverage. This is a gift to go. This is going to do a lot to bring go to new audiences. We could not have dreamed this up any better, and the match delivered beautiful games. This match has done what go always does: brings people together in friendship and cooperation, and that, like the game itself, is beautiful.”

With AlphaGo’s victory, Google DeepMind will donate the $1 million in prize money to UNICEF, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) charities, and go organizations.

Click here for complete game commentaries, as well as brief game highlights for each round.
photos: (top right) Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis with Michael Redmond (l) and Chris Garlock (r); (middle left) AlphaGo team takes a bow.

by Chris Garlock

During a long walk around Seoul on Monday — the day off before the Google DeepMind Challenge final game Tuesday
between Lee Sedol 9P and AlphaGo — Michael Redmond 9P was still thinking about the game from the previous day, in which Lee had finally snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. In reviewing the game carefully, he was convinced that Lee’s “brilliant” move 78 — which had won the game — didn’t actually work. Somehow, though, it had prompted a fatal mistake by AlphaGo, which top members of the DeepMind team were still trying to understand, and had reviewed key points with Redmond after the match and then again at breakfast Monday morning. While Redmond was fascinated with the move’s many complicated variations and trying to understand what had happened to AlphaGo, he was also thinking about Honinbo Shuwa, the 19th century Japanese professional go player admired by modern professionals for his light, flexible play, and mastery of “amashi,” taking territory early and then invading or reducing the opponent’s resulting area of influence. Which is exactly the strategy employed by Lee Sedol against AlphaGo in the fourth game on Sunday. “Shuwa would just jump into huge moyos and lay waste to them,” Redmond said as we walked past the Changgyeonggung Palace. “He’d just be kind of floating around there and still taking territory while being attacked. It was just sort of impossible to kill Shuwa’s stones.” Lee Sedol was doing things a little differently, Redmond noted. “He was taking profit and taking profit and then invading at the last minute. He’s been trying this strategy since Game 2 and it hasn’t been working but it finally did in Game 4.” In the final game, in which Lee will take black, “I think that Lee has the idea that he can use the amashi style, which is usually used when playing white, to take territory, allow AlphaGo to build a big moyo and then jump in.”
Garlock is the Managing Editor of the American Go E-Journal. photo: Redmond (left) with DeepMind team members David Silver (next to Redmond), Chris Maddison (second from right) and Thore Graepel (far right), reviewing Game 4 Sunday night.
Click here for Redmond’s Match 3 Game Highlights and here for the Match 4 Livestream commentary by Michael Redmond 9P with Chris Garlock. Click here for complete commentaries on games 1-4, as well as brief game highlights for each round.
The fifth and final game in the 5-game Lee Sedol-AlphaGo match will be Tuesday, March 15, 1P KST (Monday night 9p PST, midnight EST). The match will be livestreamed on DeepMind’s YouTube channel with commentary by Redmond and Garlock. And catch Myungwan Kim 9P’s commentary with Andrew Jackson starting at 10P PST on the AGA’s YouTube Channel. 

Lee Sedol defeats AlphaGo in masterful comeback – Game 4
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Go Grandmaster Lee Sedol Grabs Consolation Win Against Google’s AI
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Wall Street Journal

Go champion notches first victory against Google computer
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The New Yorker

Is Artificial Intelligence Being Oversold?
Scientific American

Seventeen people attended a go house-party on Friday evening to watch the third game in the Lee Sedol – AlphaGo match. Members of the San Diego Go Club and the UCSD Go club gathered at the SDGC president’s home to try to root the human on to victory. “It was almost like a go sports bar,” reports  San Diego Go Club President Ted Terpstra, “with two big-screen TVs, a couple of Macs, iPads and a bevy of cell phones all tuned to the action. The upstairs’ TV was turned on to the DeepMind YouTube analysis by Chris Garlock and Michael Redmond 9P while downstairs some were watching the AGA YouTube channel featuring Andrew Jackson and Cho Hyeyeon 9P. Gobans were scattered around flat surfaces so that the spectators could look at variations during the match. Pizza and pop supplied by the American Go Association added to the party atmosphere. Play was well past the four-hour mark when Lee Sedol resigned and lost the  game and the match. The last of the disappointed and weary group ambled out at 12:30 a.m. PST.”
photo by Ted Terpstra