by John Power, Japan Correspondent for the E-Journal
Xie to challenge for Women’s Honinbo: She may have lost some titles to Fujisawa Rina recently, but there is no doubt that Xie Yimin (reverting to Pinyin spelling) remains one of the top two women players in Japan. In the final of the 36th Women’s Honinbo tournament, held on August 17, Xie (W) beat Yoshihara Yukari 6P by 5.5 points, so she has a chance to wrest back one of her lost titles. The title match starts on September 27 and features the same pairing for three years in a row.
Ichiriki to challenge for Oza and Tengen: Ichiriki Ryo made his debut in top-seven title matches when he challenged Iyama Yuta for
the Tengen title last year. He won the second game but lost the match 1-3. This year he has earned himself two chances to take revenge.
First, in the play-off to decide the challenger for the 65th Oza title, held at the Nihon Ki-in in Tokyo on August 25, Ichiriki (B, at left) beat Shibano Toramaru (right) by 1.5 points. The senior player (Ichiriki turned 20 in June) prevailed over the junior one. If Shibano had won, he would have become the youngest player to challenge for a top-seven title. (By the way, after this result the two shared first place in the most-wins list, Shibano with 33-8 and Ichiriki with 33-9.) The first game of the title match will be played on October 20.
On August 31, the play-off to decide the challenger for the 43rd Tengen title was held at the Nihon Ki-in and it pitted Ichiriki against the 38-year-old Yamashita Keigo. This was the same pairing as last year, and the result was the same, a win for the younger player. Taking black, Ichiriki won by 4.5 points. The first game will be played on October 11.
DeepZenGo wins computer tournament: A new tournament, the Zhongxin Securities Cup World Electric Brain Go tournament, has been founded in China to decide the world’s top go-playing program, and the 1st Cup was held in Ordos in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in China, on August 16 and 17. In the final, the Japanese program DeepZenGo, often referred to just as Zen, beat CGI of Chinese Taipei. With the retirement of AlphaGo, DeepZenGo can claim to be the world’s top AI go program, but in the preliminary round it actually came third, losing to both CGI, which was top with 5-1, and Absolute Art, the to Chinese program, which was 4-1. These losses led Kato Hideki, the main programmer of Zen, to make some changes in its settings, and that secured success in the final round. (Zen beat Absolute Art in the semifinal.)
Tomorrow: Takao makes good start in Meijin title match; Women’s Meijin tournament gives up league; Promotions
players at every level, from 25k to 7d, and every age from under 10 to over 60.
Players came from six states; Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota and California. “Special kudos to Steve Burrll for coming all the way from California just for the tournament! If there had been a prize for Most Miles Traveled, he would have won it hands-down.” said Rubenstein. “Twenty of the 45 players were first-time attendees. That’s an unusually high percentage of new players.”
Your Move/Readers Write: AlphaGo is unbeatable; get over it
Sunday September 10, 2017
“Apparently, some people believe that someday a human will be able to defeat AlphaGo,” writes Joel Sanet. “It’s not gonna happen. The reason is biological, not technological. No human being is capable of thinking about the game the way AlphaGo does. AlphaGo’s way of thinking is better than the human way; ergo it is no longer possible for a human to beat AlphaGo. We human beings are not capable of considering a choice of moves by determining a concrete number for each called “the probability of winning” then choosing the one with the highest value, but this is what AlphaGo does.
“Thinking that it is possible for a human to win now is due to anthropomorphization, the application of human attributes to something that is not human, a process rampant in the go community. I have heard people say, ‘AlphaGo likes the early 3-3 invasion’ or ‘He (or she) likes thickness.’ AlphaGo can’t ‘like’ anything because it has no emotions. It plays the early 3-3 invasion because it maximizes its probability of winning in certain openings. Also, as far as I know, AlphaGo has no concept of thickness. It has nothing to do with how AlphaGo derives its moves. Furthermore, AlphaGo is not a ‘he’ or a ‘she’. AlphaGo is an ‘it’.
To attribute thinking to AlphaGo is also a mistake. I wrote that it chooses the option with the highest probability of winning. It doesn’t “choose” anything because it isn’t self-aware. AlphaGo receives input, does what it is programmed to do, and produces output. To me this is more akin to a human knee jerk than to true thought. A doctor’s percussion hammer causes sensory neurons to fire off a signal to the spinal cord where it is processed and returned to the knee via motor neurons without intercession of the brain. This is analogous to AlphaGo’s input-programming-output. AlphaGo’s programming is immutable. The day AlphaGo changes its own programming is the day I’ll say it thinks.
Nevertheless, humans can learn from AlphaGo. We have learned that the shoulder hit is a lot more useful than anyone thought. AlphaGo’s new 3-3 invasion joseki makes sense so we can benefit from that, but I advise you not to do the early invasions until you are able to read the rest of the game to the end.
Alphago’s supremacy over humans is no reason to feel that studying go is a dead end. Your study is de facto open-ended because you will never reach the end of it. People study go to improve, not to become the strongest player on the planet.”