American Go E-Journal » Korea

From SNL Korea “AlphaGo” participated in a rap battle vs Block B last weekend. Can AlphaGo master freestyle rap the way it mastered go? Click here for Show Me the AlphaGo Part 1 and Show Me the AlphaGo Part 2.
– Steve Colburn

The complete SGF game records for the incredible display of go prowess from the recent AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol 9p match appear below:
AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol 9p, Game 1
AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol 9p, Game 2
AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol 9p, Game 3
AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol 9p, Game 4
AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol 9p, Game 5

The E-Journal has extensively covered this now world famous historic match. For a starting point on post-match coverage and references, click on this E-Journal article .

For extensive and insightful commentary on the games, also visit the YouTube channel: AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol 9p , in which Michael Redmond 9p analyzes every facet of the games with E-Journal Editor Chris Garlock.

Chris Garlock will discuss the AlphaGo-Lee Sedol match Friday March 18 on the “World’s Finest Show” on WCHE 1520 AM, tune in worldwide via the listen live button at the top. Garlock commented the match with Michael Redmond 9P.

In Two Moves, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol Redefined the Future
Wired

AlphaGo seals 4-1 victory over Go grandmaster Lee Sedol
The Guardian

Game over! AlphaGo takes the final victory against Go champion Lee Sedol to finish the $1 million contest 4-1
The Daily Mail

AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol 4–1 in Google DeepMind Challenge Match
GoGameGuru

What we learned in Seoul with AlphaGo
– Demis Hassabis, CEO and Co-Founder of DeepMind

Click here to see the original.

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.