AlphaGo versus Ke Jie was a three-game Go match between the computer Go program AlphaGo Master and current world No. 1 ranking player

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 pla ...

, being part of the

Future of Go Summit The Future of Go Summit () was held in May 2017 by the Chinese Go Association, Sport Bureau of Zhejiang Province and Google in Wuzhen, Zhejiang, the permanent host of the World Internet Conference. It featured five Go games involving AlphaGo and t ...

Wuzhen Wuzhen (, Wu: Whu-tsen lit. "Wu Town") is a historic scenic town, part of Tongxiang, located in the north of Zhejiang Province, China. It lies within the triangle formed by Hangzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai. Covering an area of , Wuzhen has a tota ...

, China, played on 23, 25, and 27 May 2017. AlphaGo defeated Ke Jie in all three games.

Background

At the time of the match Ke Jie was ranked 1st among all human players worldwide under Rémi Coulom's ranking system, and had held that position since late 2014. Ke Jie was also ranked number one in the world under

Korea Baduk Association The Korea Baduk Association, also known as Hanguk Kiwon (), was founded in November 1945 by Cho Namchul. Baduk is a game which was present in Korea by the 5th century. It originated in China, but the West is more familiar with the Japanese name ...

's, Japan Go Association's and

Chinese Weiqi Association Chinese Weiqi Association (), or Chinese Go Association, founded in Hefei, Anhui in 1962, is the major go organization in China. As a branch of the Zhongguo Qiyuan, it oversees professional players as well as strong amateurs, functioning in the s ...

's ranking systems. The version of AlphaGo in this match was AlphaGo Master, the one that defeated top pros in 60 online games, using four TPUs on a single machine with Elo rating 4,858. DeepMind claimed that this version was 3-stone stronger than the version used in AlphaGo v. Lee Sedol. AlphaGo Master was actually the second best version that DeepMind had at the time, for it was already in possession of

AlphaGo Zero AlphaGo Zero is a version of DeepMind's Go software AlphaGo. AlphaGo's team published an article in the journal ''Nature'' on 19 October 2017, introducing AlphaGo Zero, a version created without using data from human games, and stronger than any ...

, a version much stronger than the Master version; this can be known by the fact that ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the 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. Although humans are ...

'' received their paper on AlphaGo Zero on April 7, before the games with Ke Jie. DeepMind did not reveal the existence of AlphaGo Zero until the paper was published in ''Nature'' in October 2017. Before the Future of Go Summit, AlphaGo Master defeated Ke Jie by three to zero during its 60 straight wins in the online games at the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017.

Games

Summary

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

DeepMind offered $1.5 million winner prizes for this match while the losing side took $300,000 for participating in the three games. AlphaGo won all three games against

. After the match between AlphaGo and Ke Jie, AlphaGo retired while DeepMind continued AI research in other areas. AlphaGo was subsequently awarded a professional 9-dan title by the

Game 1

On 23 May, AlphaGo (white) won by 0.5 points.

Game 2

The second game was played on 25 May. About 1 hour into the game, Demis Hassabis tweeted that according to AlphaGo's evaluations, Ke was playing perfectly. However, Ke later lost ground on the lower part of the board. About 4 hours into the game, AlphaGo simplified the position, and it became clear that Ke was losing. AlphaGo (black) won by resignation after move 155.

Game 3

On 27 May, Ke Jie (white) resigned in game three, finishing the series with a 3–0 win for AlphaGo. At resignation, AlphaGo (black) had roughly an hour and a half of its time remaining, while Ke Jie had roughly 32 minutes left on the clock.

Coverage

The match was barred from being live-streamed in China. The game however has been covered in China both online and on national television via

Zhejiang TV Zhejiang Television (ZJTV, ) is a satellite television channel owned by Zhejiang Radio and Television Group serving Zhejiang Province Zhejiang ( or , ; , also romanized as Chekiang) is an eastern, coastal province of the People's Rep ...

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

Commentary from DeepMindKe Jie's comments after the game.Commentary at Sensei's Library.

SGF files

Game 1Game 2Game 3
Computer Go games Human versus computer matches May 2017 sports events in China 2017 in Chinese sport AlphaGo 2017 in go