News

Ilya Shikshin won 2nd edition of the professional European championship

Ilya Shikshin won the 2nd edition of the "European pro European Championship", but only thanks to SOS tie-breaker.
As the reporter put it: "it could barely be any closer" !

Ilya was already open European champion.

There were 6 participants: the 5 "home-made (European-made) pros" (Pavol Lisy, Ali Jabarin, Mateusz Surma, Ilya Shikshin and Artem Kachanovsky)were joined by Alexandre Dinerchtein (Russia, 3p in Korea).

Missing were the following European pros: Fan Hui (I have heard he decided to stop to play tournaments), Catalin Taranu, Svetlana Shikshina (plus, of course, the European pros who live in far east Asia: Maria Zakharchenko, Antti Törmanen and Diana Köszegi).

Enjoy a thorough report here:
http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=105

7th round of European team championship: Belgium - Croatia 3-1

On 7th of February, Belgian team (Gerald -, Jan + - by 40,5 pts against a ex-multi European champion...well, in 1967 and in 1971...but still ! :-), Nelis + - by 0,5 point, oef/ouf -, Gabriel +) picked its 1st victory against the worst placed team, Croatia.

This was an important victory...but Belgium is far from being saved...

Complete results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/348

Present standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Interesting reflections on AlphaGo

Here are:

1. The reflections of a dozen of Korean professionals on AlphaGo

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10210499878164941&id=1584704...

2. A video published by Hwang In Seong analysing Alphago's innovations (= heterodox moves):
https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=64ddaJ2H6rU&u=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D...

Enjoy ! :-)

6th round of the European Team Championship: Belgium - Denmark 0-4

On 10th January, Belgian team (François -, Jan -, Nelis -, Gabriel -) has been crushed by the Danish one (0-4, all resignations !).
Belgium is now penultimate and thus threaded by demotion to C-class more than ever. Let us cross the finger for the 5 remaining rounds. It is just halfway of the competition...

Complete results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/347

Present standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

"Now, I am the Master": the invincible bot was indeed a new version of "AlphaGo"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Unofficial_online_matches_in_late_...

Ke Jie, supposedly the best player in the world, wrote:
“After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong. I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go.”

In a more positive way (?), great old champion Nieh Wei Ping: “Go is not as simple as we thought, there’s still huge room for we humans to explore. (...) Master is sent by the ‘Go God’ to guide humans.”

Some articles (among dozens ! :-)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-program-vanquishes-human-players-of-go-in...

https://qz.com/877721/the-ai-master-bested-the-worlds-top-go-players-and...

In French: http://fr.euronews.com/2017/01/05/alphago-ou-la-machine-qui-fait-encore-...

PS: personally, I am now curious to see how many handicap stones will need an human to beat "Master"
(BTW, Otake once said: "Playing God, I think I would probably have a good chance playing with 3 stones handicap, but if I had to stake my life on it, I would probably take 4 stones.").

AI definitively far beyond human intelligence: a mysterious bot crushs dozens of pros, including top players

It's over now. For sure. Bots have now become are stronger than humans: on the server "Tygem", a mysterious bot crushed dozens of pros one after the other, among whom top pros like Ke Jie, Iwama Yuta, and Park Junghwan !

The score is... 45-0 at the time I am writing these lines ! (03/01/2016)

Ke Jie, probably the best player in the world, thinks this bot is much better than the AlphaGo version who/which played against Lee Setol in April 2016!

We still do not know bot's identity:
some believe it is the new version of "AlphaGo"(maybe one not spoiled by the humans :-)).
Others think it is a Chinese project, whereas still others suspect a Korean bot...(IMHO, there are all wrong: it is Sai - Hikaru's ghost-friend - for sure :-)

The only reserve: they are all quick games (but still...)

Read more about this here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/5l3l7e/chinese_ai_crushing_pros_...

Here are the games: http://www.go-baduk-weiqi.de/masterp-schlaegt-go-profis/

PS: one thing is sure: it is not "DeepZen", who/which has been beaten sometimes...even if not often: its score on Tygem is 126-13...

Happy new year (nevertheless ?) !!!!

5th round of the European team Championship: Belgium - Turkey 1-3

Things are getting worse, as Belgium team (Lucas +, Nelis -, Gabriel -, Joost -) lost once again, this time against Turkey on 12th of December.

More than ever, Belgium stay in the red zone.
But still: we are not yet halfway of the season...

Complete results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/346

Present standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

International Amateur Pair Go Championship: Korea wins, Belgium participated

The Korean pair (Kim Sooyoun 6d and Park JongWook 7d) won the 27th International Pair Go Championship, ahead of the Taïwanese couple and the Chinese duo.

Best European pair was Hungary (Rita Pocsai 4d and Pal Balogh 6d), who ended 7th.

This year, Belgium was invited.
Our representatives were Marie Jemine 1k and Vincent Lochen 5k. They managed to win against Argentina before being paired against (too) strong opponents.

Complete results here: http://www.pairgo.or.jp/amateur/27th/players/results_e.htm

AlphaGo - Lee Setol: Commentary of the 5 games

Read here very interesting commentary by Fan Hui of the 5 games of the match between Lee Setol and AlphaGo...

https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/alphago-games-english/

For the 1st time in go history, there will be a "World Champion" (...with "Zen" as one of the 4 competitors !)

For the 1st time, a "world champion" will be selected by a specific competition (to be organized in Osaka in March 2017).

There will be 4 competitors: the best player of each of the 3 big countries (South Korea, China, Japan)...and "Zen" defending the AI (Artificial Intelligence) side!

Japanese representative will be Iwama Yuta. Probable players for China will be Ke Jie, and for Korea: Park Junghwan

This will be very exciting!

More details:
http://www.usgo.org/news/2016/11/nihon-kiin-announces-new-world-
championship-will-include-ai-program-deepzengo/