Saturday March 11, 2017
Latest Master commentary by Michael Redmond 9P with Chris Garlock, Managing Editor of the American Go E-Journal. In this game, Master shows how it resembles — and how it differs — from the great master Go Seigen.
While Go Seigen emphasized quick development to the sides and center, Master in some of its’ games seems to go directly for the center, almost as if it ignores the sides.
Thursday March 9, 2017
The American Go Association has launched a new series of video commentaries on the recent games between between Master — the latest version of AlphaGo — and top professionals. The series on the AGA’s YouTube channel features 
commentaries by Michael Redmond 9P, Jennie Shen 2P and Ryan Li 1P. Some two dozen videos are now in production and are expected to be released each Wednesday and Saturday.
In the first commentary, Michael Redmond 9P and AGA E-Journal Managing Editor Chris Garlock review the first game in the series, which took place in early January (Is AlphaGo the Master? Mystery Player Sweeps Top Pros and AlphaGo confirmed as Master/Magister, both 1/4/2017). In this game, Master plays white against Pan Tingyu 1P (username “manhan7”).
The series is produced by Andrew Jackson and Michael Wanek.
Wednesday January 4, 2017
DeepMind on Thursday afternoon confirmed that a “new prototype version” of AlphaGo has been the mystery player playing
as Master and Magister on the Tygem and FoxGo servers, defeating more than 50 of the top go players in the world.
“We’ve been hard at work improving AlphaGo,” DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis tweeted, “and over the last few days we’ve played some unofficial online games at fast time controls with our new prototype version, to check that it’s working as well as we hoped.” Hassabis went on to say that “We’re excited by the results and also by what we and the Go community can learn from some of the innovative and successful moves played by the new version of AlphaGo.”
“Having played with AlphaGo, the great grandmaster Gu Li posted that ‘Together, humans and AI will soon uncover the deeper mysteries of Go”. Now that our unofficial testing is complete, we’re looking forward to playing some official full-length games later this year in collaboration with Go organisations and experts, to explore the profound mysteries of the game further in this spirit of mutual enlightenment. We hope to make further announcements soon!”
In addition to the Top 5 placing in the poll of Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) magazine’s readers, AlphaGo was listed as the 10th most important scientific event in 2016 by Science News Magazine (Society for Science and the Public).
Note: Tobias Berben has posted 41 of the game records here.
Wednesday January 4, 2017
Is AlphaGo the Master? A mysterious online player has been making huge waves by defeating dozens of top professionals
on go sites in Asia in recent days. “Master” first appeared on December 30, 2016 (Beijing time), registering from Korea. Achieving 30 consecutive wins against many former and current world go champions, Master defeated Park Junghwan four times and Ke Jie twice. After that, Master appeared on a different go site and logged another 20 consecutive wins. That made it 50 games in a row with no losses.
While the essentially universal consensus is that this is another AI player, it’s hotly debated whether this is a new edition of AlphaGo or not. More and more seem to believe it is. There’s been no official statement from the AlphaGo team thus far, and Aja Huang cryptically responded “interesting” to speculation that AlphaGo is Master. Adding fuel to the rumors, ScienceNews tweeted “AlphaGo: Now I am the master” promoting it’s Year in review: AlphaGo scores a win for artificial intelligence story on December 29, just before Master first appeared.
On January 4 (local time), the sina.com news site was ready when Master resurfaced. It broadcast the games live, accompanied with anonymous commentaries. The Taiwanese player Zhou Junxun 9p tried first with a strategy of playing “Symmetry Go” or “Imitation Go.” But Master’s superb opening (Zhou’s own impression after the game) thwarted that effort, notching win #51.
The Chinese player Chen Yaoye 9p was the next challenger. But his computer disconnected and Chen was not able to continue. There were sarcastic comments among viewers that Chen had inadvertently broken Master’s win streak, since a game dropped after only a very few moves was technically ruled a draw.
The next two games, against Fan Tingyu 9p and Huang Yunsong 6p, resulted in Master’s 52nd and 53rd consecutive wins and are posted below. Master’s 59th and 60th (and last) games against Zhou Ruiyang 9p and Gu Li 9p also appear below.
– Ze-Li Dou, with additional reporting by Zhiyuan “Edward” Zhang
Sunday December 11, 2016
We’ve fallen behind again on responding to and publishing go-related finds from our sharp-eyed readers; here’s a partial round-up to start catching up.
President Obama on go: “If you’ve got a computer that can play Go, a pretty complicated game with a lot of variations, then developing an algorithm that lets you maximize profits on the New York Stock Exchange is probably within sight.” President Obama, in his August 24 interview with MIT’s Joi Ito and WIRED’s Scott Dadich. Thanks to Felipe M Pait.
“MIT researchers are now teaching computers to predict the future” (NBC) “Many experts had thought Go — which has significantly more sequences of valid moves — could be harder for computers to grasp…(but) A network for identifying coral knows nothing about identifying, even, grass from sidewalk. The Go network isn’t just going to become a master at checkers on its own.” Thanks to Michael Bacon.
DeepMind, Master of Go, takes on video game Starcraft (Bloomberg) Google’s DeepMind AI unit, which earlier this year achieved a breakthrough in computer intelligence by creating software that beat the world’s best human player at the strategy game Go, is turning its attention to the sci-fi video game Starcraft II. Thanks to Ted Terpstra and Les Lanphear. photo: Blizzard.com
Get a clue: The clue for 9 down in The New York Times crossword for Friday October 21 was is “Go, for one” and the answer was “game.” Thanks to Roy Laird.
LeGuin’s “Left Hand”: “On Page 240 of my Penguin copy of Ursula LeGuin’s ‘Left Hand of Darkness’ she writes ‘… Ai (the space traveller) taught me a Terran game played on squares with little stones, called ‘go’, an excellent difficult game. As he remarked there are plenty of stones here to play ‘go’ with..'” – None Redmond
Tuesday December 6, 2016
Tuo Jiaxi 9p won the first game in the best-of-three Samsung Cup final against Ke Jie 9p. Stephanie Yin 1p’s AGA YouTube commentary on Monday night’s game has now been posted. Myungwan Kim 9p will be providing commentary on
Game 2 on Tuesday, starting at 8p PST on the AGA’s YouTube and Twitch channels.
Tuesday December 6, 2016
AlphaGo is a People’s Choice finalist for Science’s “Breakthrough of the Year.” The stunning win by the go AI over Lee Sedol earlier this year was a top choice in the first round of voting as one of the most momentous scientific developments of
the year.
“We’ve just finished one round of voting with more than 11,000 votes tallied,” say Science editors, who will also release their list of top picks later this month. “Now it’s time to make your voice heard again. Choose your winner from among the five finalists. Cast your vote today, and check back on December 22 to see how your choice stacks up against ours.”
Saturday December 3, 2016
AlphaGo is a top contender for the 2016 “Breakthrough of the Year” in Science’s annual survey of momentous scientific 
discoveries, developments, or trends. Voting continues through Sunday, December 4; click here to vote. At 14%, “AI Ups its Game” is second only to “Human embryos in a dish,” with 20% response, narrowly leading “Ripples in spacetime” with 13%. After voting closes on Sunday, a second round of voting will be conducted with the 5 finalists to pick the official winner, and the People’s Choice selection, along with Science editors’ pick, will be announced on December 22.
Wednesday November 30, 2016
The Nihon Kiin on Tuesday announced a new World Championship tournament that will include top professional players 
and a strong AI program, to be held in Osaka in March 2017. The tournament is sponsored by NTT Docomo, Mitsui Sumimoto, Daiwa Securities, Hankyu Inc. and Nikkei Inc., and is organized by the Nihon Kiin. With a top prize of \30M (about $270K) and runner-up prize of \10M, the tournament has one of the highest prize structures among go championships.
From March 20-24, three top players from Japan, China, and Korea will join DeepZenGo in a four-round round-robin tournament at Nihon Kiin’s Kansai branch office. Additional playoff will be held in case of ties.
Iyama Yuta (right) has been chosen as the Japanese representative. The ‘seven-crown champion’ who holds all the major Japanese pro titles, Iyama said that he was honored to be chosen and this would be the first time in a long while that he could play in an international tournament without conflicts with the tight domestic competition schedule. He promised to do his best to get good results for Japan. Chinese and Korean representatives will be determined soon.
DeepZenGo was chosen to represent AI. Hideki Kato, DeepZen’s author, expressed gratitude to the great effort and support of the organizers and promised that DeepZenGo would work hard to improve in the next few month to achieve a good result in the tournament.
– Thomas Hsiang
AGA releases latest Master Review Series: Game 18: Master [B] vs. Ke Jie 9p [W]
Monday March 13, 2017
Jennie Shen 2P, hosted by Andrew Jackson, translates Meng Tailing 6P’s commentary and adds her own analysis of Master’s
(AlphaGo) 18th game. In this game, Master plays black against one of the strongest players in the world, Ke Jie 9P. Click here to see the video.