Seong-Jin Kim 8d won the EGCC 25th Anniversary Tournament, held October 21-22 at the European Go Cultural Centre (EGCC) in
Amstelveen, the Netherlands. The tournament was the centerpiece of the Center’s 25th anniversary celebrations, which included a series of events held October 20-22, from a European Go Teachers’ Day to simuls and an evening reception.
The festivities began on Friday morning, October 20, with a full day of seminars, discussion, presentations and brainstorming by eighteen go teachers from seven different countries. Rob van Zeijst and Kalli Balduin organized the session, which featured topics like the professionalization of Western go education, the mindset of the teacher and his students, the do’s and don’ts of go teaching, obstacles for go teachers and how to overcome them, and the everlasting question “how to best promote our 
sport?”
A reception Friday night was highlighted by distinguished guests, including Hiroshi Yamashiro, vice-president of the Nihon Ki-in, Setsuko Kawahara, minister of the Embassy of Japan in the Netherlands, Maaike van Veeningen, alderman of the city of Amstelveen, Kenji Saito, chairman of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce (JCC) in the Netherlands, Martin Stiassny, president of the European Go Federation and Han Ellenbroek, president of the Dutch Go Association.
The EGCC Anniversary Go Tournament ran Saturday and Sunday, October 21-22, and was preceded by the work of three fanatics who cleaned all the EGCC’s go equipment, a long overdue task. Michał Łukasiewicz, Justyna Klęczar and Kim Ouweleen took several days to clean the Center’s 54 kaya and katsura go boards, as well as thousands of slate and shell go stones (left) and their bowls. On Saturday evening, after an Indonesian style dinner, participants had their choice of several fun side events, including simuls with Artem Kachanovskyi 1p, Cătălin Țăranu 5p, Seong-jin Kim 8d (top right) and Stanisław Frejlak 6d.
– adapted from a report by Kim Ouweleen. Click here for complete tournament results. photos by Judith van Dam (EuroGoTV); report edited by Chris Garlock
AlphaGo Zero-AlphaGo Master: Two openings, less variety
Saturday November 11, 2017
“In the set of 20 games between AG Zero and AG Master, there are pretty much just two openings — i.e. identical moves for about the first 20
moves — one with Zero as Black and one with Master as Black,” says Michael Redmond 9p in this first commentary on the recently released AG Zero games. “This provides an opportunity to examine how Zero differs from Master, as well as how Master differs from earlier versions. ”
“When AGMaster plays against AGZero, it does not show the variety that it had before,” says Redmond. “As AG does not change within a version, I find it hard to accept that it apparently does not have the option to play moves that it played before in identical board positions. In the ‘Master series’, 60 games played against top pros in Dec 2016 to Jan 2017, Master could play the 3-4 point as it’s first move in about 1/4 of the games when it had Black. Incidentally, AGKeJie also could play the 3-4 point in some of it’s games. The fact that Master repeats the same opening every time in these games against AGZero bothers me and makes me question, is this truly the same version of AGMaster that played the Master series, and if so, what caused it to play the same opening every time in this series, when it was allowed to have variety in previous games with identical board positions? The difference in calculated winning percentage between A and B should be extremely small and I would expect it to have little or no effect on the ultimate win-loss record. This set of games would be much more valuable if Master had been allowed to vary in it’s choices for moves.”
Click here for Redmond’s video commentary, hosted by the AGA E-Journal’s Chris Garlock, and see below for the two sgf commentaries. Note that these commentaries focus only on the two openings; watch for a full-game Zero-Master commentary next week. Click here for a playlist of all the Redmond AG commentaries.
Video produced by Michael Wanek and Andrew Jackson. The sgf files were created by Redmond, with editing and transcription by Garlock and Myron Souris.
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