Chinese weiqi grandmasters team up against AlphaGo

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After cooperating with human weiqi (Go) players in a "Paired Go" match this morning, AlphaGo, the weiqi AI program, stood alone against a team of Chinese grandmasters in a "Team Go" showcase match.

Chen Yaoye, Zhou Ruiyang, Mi Yuting, Shi Yue and Tang Weixing, all 9-dan professionals, sat around a table to discuss every stone they were playing in the match. The oldest of the five was born in 1989.

The team was led by Zhou Ruiyang, who would try to help all five masters to reach consensus if they couldn't agree with each other.

Zhou leads the five-man team to match with AlphaGo. /Web Photo‍

Zhou is famous for his efforts to imitate AlphaGo's style and so is nicknamed "AlphaYang" by weiqi fans in China.

Five is less than one?

An interesting comment was made by Gu Li 9-dan, after his match with and against AlphaGo. "Five could be less than one, since the 2.5-hour total thinking time is not quite enough for the five boys to discuss."

"If they were given five hours or more, they may perform better than Ke Jie," Gu told CGTN in an exclusive interview.

During the match, five masters went excited trying to find the best way to play against AlphaGo, leaving commenters worrying for their time limit. The time they spent to think was more than five times longer than AlphaGo, which is rumored to take only ten seconds to decide its move.

Web Photo

As the match went into the final stage, the five-member human team slowly found themselves trapped into AlphaGo's game. And as Gu predicted, the time was not enough at all for the guys to discuss.

After the thinking time depleted, Tang Weixing stood out to go against AlphaGo alone, as there's no time for the team to discuss.

Eventually, the three-hour long match concluded with AlphaGo as the winner.