News

interesting: a dynamic view of the top-10 champions since 1974 (you tube)

So as to think about something else in this dark day...
This dynamic video shows the day-to-day evolution of the top 10 go players since 1974...

Interesting to see the emergence of China and Korea since 1990...(and sudden AlphaGo's appearance at 2nd place a few days ago)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRvlyEpOQ-8

Start interclub 2016

This week the first match of the interclub 2016 will be played. A stunning amount of 8 clubs are participating, the highest amount in a decade.

You can find the interclub schedule and results here: http://www.gofed.be/en/tournament/interclubs

May the best club win.

The end of human's superiority on A.I. in go: AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol 4-1

DeepMind’s groundbreaking artificial intelligence (A.I.), AlphaGo, defeated Lee Sedol in the final game of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match, winning the five game match with a 4–1 score.

AlphaGo now goes down in history as the 1st computer Go program to defeat a top professional player, and was awarded an honorary professional 9 dan rank by the Korean Baduk Association (note: AG is even ranked nr 2 on http://www.goratings.org/ :-).

More info on https://gogameguru.com

PS:....among many others sites and articles...the event was largely commented !
For instance: Michael Silcher (member of the board) was interviewed on RTBF. Listen to him here: http://www.rtbf.be/radio/podcast/player?id=2091036&channel=lapremiere

Lee Sedol fights back in the match against AlphaGo

Although the match is already won by AlphaGo, the remaining games are played to the full. Lee Sedol won game 4 holding white thanks to a brilliant move in a difficult middle game. This move was even qualified as "god move" by Gu Li, 9p.

This win is quite important from a symbolic point of view. It also exposes some weaknesses of AlphaGo that were invisible so far.

Game 5 will be held on Tuesday 15 March. It has been agreed that Lee Sedol will hold black.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/go-grandmaster-lee-sedol-grabs-consolation-...

AlphaGo beats world champion Lee Sedol with 3 straight wins

AlphaGo, the go playing software developed by Google Deepmind, has defeated Lee Sedol with three straight wins in their long awaited match!

This amazing achievement comes five months after AlphaGo won 5-0 against Fan Hui. Most of the commentators before the match predicted that AlphaGo had no chance to win against such a strong player as Lee Sedol. However, AlphaGo proved them wrong and edged Lee Sedol in every part of the first three games.

3rd European Professional Qualification: Artem Kachanovskyi is the new pro 2016

This week end, 16 top European amateurs fought to become the fifth European professional go player.

Ukranian Artem Kachanovskyi beat his countryfellow Andrei Kravets in final and join the four ex-amateurs who already qualified as pros through similar competitions in 2014 (Lisy, Jabarin) and 2015 (Shikshin, Surma).

Complete results can be found here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=40

François Gonze (3-d) wins in Leuven

François Gonze, 3d won the tournament of Leuven with a perfect score. Lucas Neirynck, 5d ended 2nd (4-1); Jan Ramon, 4d completed the podium (3-2).

This edition met a big success with a total of 46 participants!

Complete results: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Tournament_Card.php?&key=T160220D&p...

The big challenge "Human vs. A.I." coming soon (9th to 15th March)

AlphaGo will face its ultimate challenge: a 5-game challenge match in Seoul against the legendary Lee Sedol, the top Go player in the world over the past decade

Read everything about the match here:
http://deepmind.com/alpha-go.html

(comments on youtube are planed)

Here some reactions and prognoses by some pro players:
http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=36

Fan Hui wins the 1st European professional Championship

To participate in this tournament, competitors must have professional status and passport of EGF member.

There were 5:
Fan Hui (FR)
Mateusz Surma (PL)
Ilya Shikshin (RU)
Ali Jabarin (IL)
Alexander Dinerstein (RU)

Missing professional players were: Pavol Lisy, Guo Juan, Catalin Taranu, Antti Tormannen and Svetlana Shikshina.

Impressively enough, Fan Hui won unbeaten (4-0) !

All the other pros, except Alexander Dinerstein (0-4), got a 2-2 score (Mateusz Surma winning the tie-break games to end as 2nd).

Complete results here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?EuropeanProfessionalGoChampionship

7th round of the European team Championship: Belgium - United Kingdom 2-2

End February, Belgian team (François + , Kwinten -, Nelis +, Gabriel -) made a draw against UK in the 7th round.

Belgium is now in the middle of the "peloton" (6th out of 12 teams) in this B-league.

Here are the results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/291

And here the standings after this round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps