GO

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I was just wondering if anyone else here is interested in this amazing strategy game? I know that Nathan has indicated a familiarity with it, and I was curious to know how many, if any, other Go players we hold in our ranks.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Go is an ancient precursor of chess, about four thousand years old in fact. And unlike chess, its play is essentially unchanged in all that time. It too is divided into the same basic phases of the game, but where in chess you start with the option of +/- 35 moves, in Go, you have a choice of 361 possible 1st moves.

It’s a deceptively simple game, with only about four real “Rules,” which you can learn in about 10 minutes. All you do is place Black or White stones on a 19x19 grid. The object is to enclose as much territory as possible with your stones. Once placed, the stones are never moved unless captured by the enemy, resulting in patterns of startling complexity.

More popular than chess in Asia, and still relativley unknown in the west, a rich and complex tradition has surrounded it over the millennia.

The strategies and techniques are literally endless, and the Asian devotion to culture has ensured that much of it survives. Records still exist of famous games played over 2000 years ago, and there are Go Dojo’s where people devote their entire lives to understanding the complexities of this easy game.

They say that, like snowflakes, no two games of Go have ever been the same, and as an example of the intricacy of the game, there is a standing prize of one million dollars for anyone who can create a computer program that can defeat even an experienced amateur player.

It is believed that this would be a significant step toward AI. According to a recent article, it would take Deep Blue 18 months to make a single move, and even then, it would have no advantage over a human player.

I still love chess, but in all honesty, Go makes it look like a kindergarten game.

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[danlo]

deceptively simple game? Ay yi! It's maddening! (I'll be back--still smarting from my 3-90 record 20 years ago)

[Avatar]

Great! Thats one at least.

There's no shame in defeat danlo, like fencing, (almost the only other sport I'm into), they say that it actually takes several lifetimes to master.

Practice and study are the only way to improve. Once it takes hold, it's truly an amazing game.

Come Back!
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[Nathan]

I've played it a bit. Probably more than a lot of people, but not enough to be anything beyond pathetic. I'm sure if I practised enough I'd get good, but I'm busy learning Wing Chun Kuen at the moment and it's taking lots of my spare time.

[I'm Murrin]

I tried playing Go a while back, but found it too difficult against other human players. I just don't have the right mind for that sort of game (which is why I'm also only average at chess).

[hierachy]

I've played it a bit... didn't really get into it, though.

[danlo]

Wasn't that Go they were playing at Princeton U. in A Beautiful Mind?

[Nathan]

I think so yes, that was a great film.
It also featured in Andromeda and something else the name of which I can't remember

[Avatar]

I tried playing Go a while back, but found it too difficult against other human players. I just don't have the right mind for that sort of game (which is why I'm also only average at chess).

Personally, I found that being a keen chess player (I've played since I was five) was a bit of a hinderance in getting my head around the concept of Go. I had to get into the habit of thinking along the lines, instead of "in the squares". Found that chess also made me look at things diagonally (like the bishop) when in Go, only the vertical and the horizontal apply.

Yes, Go was the game at which the 10-year old beat the "genius" in A Beautiful Mind, a scene which did more for Go in the West than almost anything else.

I'm not familiar with Andromeda, although I know there is a B&W movie that's either about Go, or features it strongly, I don't know the title, have only seen a clip from it.

Sun Tzu mentions it, albeit in a slightly derogatory way, in his Art of War, Iain M Banks features it in Feersum Endjinn, and of course, it's the game that "Stones" is based on in Robert Jordans Wheel of Time.

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[CovenantJr]

I have a friend who is a Go fan, but I'd never heard of it til she mentioned it to me, and I felt (and feel) no inclination to play it. Simply because I'm rubbish at strategy. Ask anyone who played me at chess.

[Avatar]

Despite it's recent rise in popularity, it's still one of the least known board games, at least in the West. When I mention it, nine out of ten people say "huh?" and the tenth one says "I think I've heard of it."

Cj, practice, that's all. (I'm talking about the chess here) it's a matter of training your mind into those patterns, and practice is the only thing that does it.

Take it easy
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[hierachy]

I've been playing a few games at yahoo games... I prefer chess.

[Avatar]

Aah, just wait till you get into it. A bit of study will lead you into the complexities more quickly than playing any number of beginner games.

It's only once you get the hang of the theory that it's intracacies become apparent.

--A

[The Appointed]

Ah ... Go is the worldest greatest game.

I am an AGA 6 Dan and teach people all the time www.seattlegocenter.org

The scenes in A Beautiful Mind are from him playing Go and he is one of the origonal members of the AGA (American Go Association.) However, the single thing that is doing more for Go in America is the manga/anime Hikaru no Go. Currently, you can read translations of Hikaru no Go into English in the Manga publication Shonen Jump, published by Viz.

The Appointed

[Avatar]

I am an AGA 6 Dan and teach people all the time

I abase myself before thee, Mighty One. From such lofty heights, my meagre accomplishments are as nothing.

Seriously though, sorry it took me so long to get back here after pointing the thread out to you in the first place.

There are so many topics that I participate in, I can't ever remember all of them, and this one has been unfortunately quiet.

I had no idea that Manga was bringing Go to the West. Although I discovered the game in theory many years ago, I only recently, (3 years or so) found someone to teach me.

Actually, I had the great good fortune to ask my landlord whether he played chess, and discovered that he was a Go player. (He since became the President of the Johannesburg Go Association, and then retired.) Not only did he teach me the fundamentals of the game, but also made available a great deal of excellent literature dealing with it.

I think that my personal favourite is the short book, Master of Go, by Yasunari Kawabata, about the last man to bear the title, who died in Japan around WWII. If you haven't read it, (although you probably have) it's a must.

Also really enjoyed Killer of Go by Sakato Eio, who became, IIRC, an Honourary Honinbo after defending his title for 6 years, and was also the first Meijin-Honinbo in history.

Damn, I could go on, but not only am I preaching to the converted, but you probably know a lot more about it than I do.

Still, great to see another player here. Welcome, Welcome, Thrice Welcome.

*bows, smiling*

--Avatar

[Avatar]

Well hell. They did it. And they did it 10 years faster than expected. A computer has beaten a professional human Go player. For decades, this has been considered a significant indicator of progress toward true AI.

Don't know whether to be afraid, or excited.

Computer Beats Human Go Champ

In a milestone for artificial intelligence, a computer has beaten a human champion at a strategy game that requires "intuition" rather than brute processing power to prevail, its makers said on Wednesday.

Dubbed AlphaGo, the system honed its own skills through a process of trial and error, playing millions of games against itself until it was battle-ready, and surprised even its creators with its prowess.

"AlphaGo won five-nil, and it was stronger than perhaps we were expecting," said Demis Hassabis, the chief executive of Google DeepMind, a British artificial intelligence (AI) company.

A computer defeating a professional human player at the 3 000-year-old Chinese board game known as Go, was thought to be about a decade off.

The clean-sweep victory over three-time European Go champion Fan Hui "signifies a major step forward in one of the great challenges in the development of artificial intelligence - that of game-playing," the British Go Association said in a statement.

The two-player game is described as perhaps the most complex ever designed, with more configurations possible than there are atoms in the Universe, Hassabis says.

Players take turns placing stones on a board, trying to surround and capture the opponent's stones, with the aim of controlling more than 50% of the board.

There are hundreds of places where a player can place the first stone, black or white, with hundreds of ways in which the opponent can respond to each of these moves and hundreds of possible responses to each of those in turn.

"But as simple as the rules are, Go is a game of profound complexity. There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible positions," Hassabis explained in a blog.

Such a search base is "too enormous and too vast for brute force approaches to have any chance," added his colleague David Silver, who co-authored the paper in the science journal Nature.

So the team sought to create an AI system with a "more human-like" approach to a game Hassabis said "is played primarily through intuition and feel."

Deep neural networks

AlphaGo uses two sets of "deep neural networks" containing millions of neuron-like connections to reduce the search base to something more manageable.

The first, "policy network" narrows the search at each turn to only those moves most likely to lead to a win.

The second, "value network", estimates a winner from each move made, "rather than searching all the way to the end of the game," said Silver.

"AlphaGo looks ahead by playing out the remainder of the game in its imagination many times over," he explained.

"The search process itself is not based on brute force, it's based on something more akin to imagination."

AlphaGo was programmed with 30 million moves from games played by human experts, and then left to do some self-coaching.

It played "thousands and thousands of games between its neural networks, gradually improving them using a trial-and-error process known as reinforcement learning," said Silver.

The result: The value networks are able to "very accurately" estimate the eventual winner from any Go position, "a problem that was so hard it was believed to be impossible."

'Intuitive machinery'

AlphaGo was tested against the best existing Go programmes, and won all but one of its 500 games, even when giving away free moves as a head-start.

Then last October, it beat Hui.

Tanguy Chouard, a Nature editor, described the feat as an "historical milestone" in AI development, which lies "right at the heart of the mystery of what intelligence is."

Computer games serve as a testing ground for AI developers seeking to invent smart and flexible algorithms that can tackle problems in ways similar to humans.

The first game mastered by a computer was noughts and crosses in 1952, followed by checkers in 1994, and the famous victory by IBM supercomputer Deep Blue over chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

In 2014, another DeepMind system called DQN taught itself to play 49 different video games, and beat human professionals at those.

But Go has proven tough, and until now, computers could only play as amateurs.

"In the game of Go, we need this amazingly complex, intuitive machinery which people previously thought was only possible within the human brain, to even have an idea of who's ahead and what the right move is," said Silver.

The technology may prove useful in making smarter smartphones, and improving medical diagnostics or climate change models, said the team.

AlphaGo's next challenge will be in March, in Seoul, against Go world champion Lee Sedol of South Korea, who has held the crown for a decade.

"I have heard that Google DeepMind's AI is surprisingly strong and getting stronger, but I am confident that I can win at least this time," he said in a statement.

--A