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I really enjoyed Myungwan's down-and-dirty commentary, and watching him get lost in some variations, and it was just incredibly exciting to see him get won over to AlphaGo during the game. From about move 50, I was just viscerally excited to see where things went, and the game did not disappoint in any way.

I've read a few different reviews and watched Michael Redmond's live commentary as well, who obviously has a slower Japanese style of play than Myungwan, and his variations all exhibited a very thorough style and sensibility, but I think he missed the key moment, and Myungwan called it -- the bottom right just killed Lee Sedol, and it was totally unexpected.

And, Sedol was thinking about it too, because right after he resigned, he wanted to clear out that bottom right corner and rework some variations. I presume that's one frustration playing with a computer -- they'll have to instrument AlphaGo to do a little kibbitzing and talking after a game. That would be just awesome.

If you are very, very inspired by AlphaGo's side of this, it's really incredible to imagine, just for a moment, that building that white wall down to the right was in preparation for the white bottom right corner variation. The outcome of that corner play was to just massively destroy black territory, on a very painful scale, and it made perfect use of the white wall in place from much earlier in the game.

If AlphaGo was in fact aiming at those variations while the wall was being built, I would think at a fundamental level, Go professionals are in the position that chess grandmasters were ten years ago -- acknowledging they will never see as deeply as a computerized opponent. It's both incredibly exciting, and a blow to an admirable and very unusual group of worldwide game masters.

I loved every minute!!



Building the wall down to attack the bottom right corner isn't something outrageous, not to those at the level of Sedol. AlphaGo definitely played amazing, as the game was very technical in term of fighting. But the "flow" (chase out weak group then invade a corner) is a fairly common situation. I don't think it's a matter of AlphaGo seeing strategy further than Sedol. It might have had much deeper calculation and reading than Sedol - as showed in deflecting the attachment in lower right - but that's a bit of a different story.


I'm planning to watch the AGA coverage later, after watching the DeepMind coverage live. I found the DeepMind pair a bit underwhelming. Redmond was excellent at playing through some variations, but they did get very distracted at times, and away from what was actually happening. His co-host was playing a little too strong on the 'I'm so nervous' line, I felt. So I didn't spot the significance of the bottom right pivotal moves. Thanks for the recommendation, I'm looking forward to the AGA coverage even more now.




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