AlphaGo versus Fan Hui was a five-game Go match between European champion

Fan Hui Fan Hui (; born 27 December 1981) is a Chinese-born French Go player. Becoming a professional Go player in 1996, Fan moved to France in 2000 and became the coach of the French national Go team in 2005. He was the winner of the European Go Champio ...

, a 2-dan (out of 9 dan possible) professional, and

AlphaGo AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go (game), Go. It was developed by DeepMind Technologies a subsidiary of Google (now Alphabet Inc.). Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that ...

, a

computer Go Computer Go is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to creating a computer program that plays the traditional board game Go. The field is sharply divided into two eras. Before 2015, the programs of the era were weak. The best ...

program developed by

DeepMind DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and research laboratory founded in 2010. DeepMind was List of mergers and acquisitions by Google, acquired by Google in 2014 and became a wholly owned subsid ...

, held at DeepMind's headquarters in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in October 2015. AlphaGo won all five games. This was the first time a computer Go program had beaten a professional human player on a full-sized board without handicap. This match was not disclosed to the public until 27 January 2016 to coincide with the publication of a paper in the journal ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'' describing the algorithms AlphaGo used. Fan described the program as "very strong and stable, it seems like a wall. ... I know AlphaGo is a computer, but if no one told me, maybe I would think the player was a little strange, but a very strong player, a real person."

Games

Summary

In this match, DeepMind used AlphaGo's distributed version with 1,202

CPUs A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

and 176

GPUs A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

with

Elo rating The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved ch ...

3,144. For each game there was a one-hour set time limit for each player followed by three 30-second byo-yomi overtime periods. During this match, AlphaGo and Fan Hui also played another five informal games with shorter time control (each player having just three 30-second byo-yomi) and AlphaGo defeated Fan by three to two.

Game 1

Fan Hui (black) v. AlphaGo (white), 5 October 2015, AlphaGo won by 2.5 points.

Game 2

AlphaGo (black) v. Fan Hui (white), 6 October 2015, AlphaGo won by resignation. Although the white stones at the lower-left corner could have been captured if black 135 had been placed at "a", AlphaGo's choice might be safer to win.

Game 3

Fan Hui (black) v. AlphaGo (white), 7 October 2015, AlphaGo won by resignation.

Game 4

AlphaGo (black) v. Fan Hui (white), 8 October 2015, AlphaGo won by resignation.

Game 5

Fan Hui (black) v. AlphaGo (white), 9 October 2015, AlphaGo won by resignation. Black 75 should be placed at 83, and Fan Hui missed the opportunity.

Responses

AlphaGo's victory shocked the Go community.

Lee Sedol Lee Sedol ( ko, 이세돌; born 2 March 1983), or Lee Se-dol, is a former South Korean professional Go player of 9 dan rank. As of February 2016, he ranked second in international titles (18), behind only Lee Chang-ho (21). He is the fi ...

commented that AlphaGo reached the top of the amateur level in this match, but had not yet reached the professional level, and he could give AlphaGo one or two stones.

Ke Jie Ke Jie () is a Chinese professional Go player of 9 dan rank. He was born on August 2, 1997 in Liandu District, Lishui City, Zhejiang Province. Career 2008–15: Early Career and Bailing Cup Breakthrough Ke Jie started to learn how to play ...

and

Mi Yuting Mi Yuting (; born 8 January 1996) is a Chinese professional go player. As of Oct 2018, he is ranking 1st in Go ratings with an Elo rating of 3645. Promotion record Titles and runners-up Head-to-head record vs selected players ''Players ...

thought that the strength of AlphaGo in this match was equal to that of a candidate for Go professional, and extremely close to the professional level, while

Shi Yue Shi Yue or Shiyue may refer to: People * Shi Yue (Former Qin) (died 384), military general of Former Qin *Shi Yue (Go player) (born 1991), Chinese Go player * Shi Yue (fencer) (born 1999), Chinese fencer Others *Shiyue, the tenth month of the Chin ...

thought that it already reached the professional level. "It was terrifying," said Ke Jie, "that AlphaGo could learn and evolve although its power was still limited then." Canadian AI specialist

Jonathan Schaeffer Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer (born 1957) is a Canadian researcher and professor at the University of Alberta and the former Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence. He led the team that wrote Chinook, the world's strongest American ch ...

, comparing AlphaGo with a "child prodigy" that lacked experience, considered this match "not yet a Deep Blue moment", and said that the real achievement would be "when the program plays a player in the true top echelon".

References

{{Go (game) Computer Go games 2015 in go October 2015 sports events in the United Kingdom Sports competitions in London AlphaGo Human versus computer matches 2015 in London