Chess blogger Michael Bacon — the “Armchair Warrior” has recently published some posts on go, including “AlphaGo and the Hand of God,” “The Surrounding Game” and “Weiqi (Go) Versus Chess.” In addition to being well-written, thoughtful – and sometime provocative — explorations, Bacon’s posts are well-illustrated with photos and videos. 
“AlphaGo and the Hand of God’ is about the “AlphaGo,” documentary, which Bacon calls “poignant,” adding that “While watching the movie the thought crossed my mind that what I was watching was a watershed moment in the history of mankind, analogous to Neal Armstrong’s ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’”
In “The Surrounding Game,”Bacon reminds readers that not only was Edward Lasker – attributed in the film as the source of a famous quote about go – an International Master, not a Grandmaster, as identified in the film, but that there is a dispute about the quote itself, with some attributing it to former World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker, a distant relative. However, Bacon clearly likes the film, which follows the lives of several top American players, Ben Lockhart and Andy Liu, competing to become the first Western professional. “Despite their diverging paths, Ben and Andy face the same question: is a lifetime dedicated to Go truly worth living?”
And in “Weiqi (Go) Versus Chess”, Bacon contrasts chess and go in politics, popularity and player personalities. Noting that “Chess appeals to people who like to attack and who savor the win over the process,” Bacon says that go “is a game of patience and position. It appeals to very bright people who don’t expect to win quickly but who are willing to earn success one small step at a time. GO players enjoy the process as much as the win.” He also argues that “AlphaGo has done for the game of Go in America what Bobby Fischer did for the game of Chess when he defeated the World Chess Champion, Boris Spassky, in 1972… In a very short period of time the game of Go will be unrivaled, leaving all other board games in its wake.” Further, he suggests that “It could be that the people of the planet are moving away from the brutal, war like, mindset of a war like game such as Chess and toward a more cerebral game such as Go.”
left off. A Chinese-developed AI program, Golaxy, defeated world #2 Ke Jie recently (right), and Golaxy chairman Jin Xing claims it can reach the same level of mastery as AlphaGo from playing much fewer games. And Facebook’s ELF OpenGo recently took on four top-30 human go players—running on a computer with a single GPU powering its computations—and won 14-0. Facebook is making ELF OpenGo available for free to other researchers. In other go AI news, check out this 40-minute documentary, Behind the scenes of Fine Art AI.
AlphaGo Zero vs. Master with Michael Redmond 9p: Game 8
Saturday April 14, 2018
Michael Redmond 9p, hosted by the AGA E-Journal’s Chris Garlock, reviews the eighth game of the new AlphaGo Zero vs.
Master series.
“Zero just doesn’t care about its opponent’s moyo,” says Redmond. “It can do anything inside the moyo. Human pros who have tried to emulate this strategy have just crashed almost every time. Miserably. But Zero has no trouble dealing with its weak groups, so in this game we’re going to see a lot of dancing around inside Master’s moyo. Plus a really weird endgame.” Redmond also has some interesting observations about the similarities — and differences — between top human players and AI players.
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