Results

8th round of the European Team Championship: Belgium - Sweden 2-2

On 28th of February, Belgian team (Lucas +, Kwinten -, Nelis -, Gabriel +) made draw against Sweden.
Three rounds left to be played...Belgium remains in the red zone...

Complete results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/349

Present standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

How strong are the home-made European pros ?

The go server Tygem has just organized a match between Kim Seung-Jun (also known as "Blackie"), a famous 9 dan professional player, against the 5 home-made European pros (Ilya Shikchine, Pavol Lisy, Artem Kachanovskij, Mateusz Surma and Ali Jabarin).

All games were played without komi (Kim playing white, of course).

The final score is 3-2 for Kim (Ilya and Mateusz won).

Conclusion: according to this result, it seems that "our" pros have really a professional strength: the handicap between top professional players and young beginning professionals is currently estimated to be of 1 to 2 stone/s.

More detail here: http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=99
PS: enjoy the genial move 224 by Kim in his game against Ali !

European Youth championship 2017 results; Sinan Djepov, the Bulgarian go genius

More than 200 young participants (among whom many Russian ones) played the European Youth Championship organized in Grenoble.

There were 3 categories:

Under 12 (92 participants !): winner was Ivan Klochikhine (RU, 4k)

Under 16 (79 participants): winner was Oscar Vasquez (SP, 3d) (who used to play in Belgium some years ago), ahead of Valeri Krushelnytskyi (UA, 4d)

Under 20: the all-Russian podium is composed by Vjacheslav Kajmin (RU, 5d) ahead of the great favourite Grigorij Fionin (RU, 6d) and Anton Chernykh (RU, 5d).
(Kajmin was European champion in 2015 and in 2016 in category "under 16")

Complete results here:
http://eygc2017.jeudego.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/EYGC-20_final-res...
http://eygc2017.jeudego.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/EYGC-16_final-res...
http://eygc2017.jeudego.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/EYGC-12_final-res...

***

Another point: did you know Sinan Djepov ?
I would like you to note the good performance of Bulgarian Sinan Djepov (BG, 5d), one of the European rising star.
Sinan managed to defeat Fionin (the favourite) and lost his 2 lost games by 0,5 pt.
He learned go in July 2013 as autodidact (there are no many go players in Bulgaria) and was already 4d one year and few months later! This is the quickest progression ever in Europe. Last but not least, Sinan is 16 years old!

Ilya Shikshin won 2nd edition of the professional European championship

Ilya Shikshin won the 2nd edition of the "European pro European Championship", but only thanks to SOS tie-breaker.
As the reporter put it: "it could barely be any closer" !

Ilya was already open European champion.

There were 6 participants: the 5 "home-made (European-made) pros" (Pavol Lisy, Ali Jabarin, Mateusz Surma, Ilya Shikshin and Artem Kachanovsky)were joined by Alexandre Dinerchtein (Russia, 3p in Korea).

Missing were the following European pros: Fan Hui (I have heard he decided to stop to play tournaments), Catalin Taranu, Svetlana Shikshina (plus, of course, the European pros who live in far east Asia: Maria Zakharchenko, Antti Törmanen and Diana Köszegi).

Enjoy a thorough report here:
http://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=105

7th round of European team championship: Belgium - Croatia 3-1

On 7th of February, Belgian team (Gerald -, Jan + - by 40,5 pts against a ex-multi European champion...well, in 1967 and in 1971...but still ! :-), Nelis + - by 0,5 point, oef/ouf -, Gabriel +) picked its 1st victory against the worst placed team, Croatia.

This was an important victory...but Belgium is far from being saved...

Complete results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/348

Present standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

Interesting reflections on AlphaGo

Here are:

1. The reflections of a dozen of Korean professionals on AlphaGo

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10210499878164941&id=1584704...

2. A video published by Hwang In Seong analysing Alphago's innovations (= heterodox moves):
https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=64ddaJ2H6rU&u=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D...

Enjoy ! :-)

6th round of the European Team Championship: Belgium - Denmark 0-4

On 10th January, Belgian team (François -, Jan -, Nelis -, Gabriel -) has been crushed by the Danish one (0-4, all resignations !).
Belgium is now penultimate and thus threaded by demotion to C-class more than ever. Let us cross the finger for the 5 remaining rounds. It is just halfway of the competition...

Complete results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/347

Present standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

"Now, I am the Master": the invincible bot was indeed a new version of "AlphaGo"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Unofficial_online_matches_in_late_...

Ke Jie, supposedly the best player in the world, wrote:
“After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong. I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go.”

In a more positive way (?), great old champion Nieh Wei Ping: “Go is not as simple as we thought, there’s still huge room for we humans to explore. (...) Master is sent by the ‘Go God’ to guide humans.”

Some articles (among dozens ! :-)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-program-vanquishes-human-players-of-go-in...

https://qz.com/877721/the-ai-master-bested-the-worlds-top-go-players-and...

In French: http://fr.euronews.com/2017/01/05/alphago-ou-la-machine-qui-fait-encore-...

PS: personally, I am now curious to see how many handicap stones will need an human to beat "Master"
(BTW, Otake once said: "Playing God, I think I would probably have a good chance playing with 3 stones handicap, but if I had to stake my life on it, I would probably take 4 stones.").

AI definitively far beyond human intelligence: a mysterious bot crushs dozens of pros, including top players

It's over now. For sure. Bots have now become are stronger than humans: on the server "Tygem", a mysterious bot crushed dozens of pros one after the other, among whom top pros like Ke Jie, Iwama Yuta, and Park Junghwan !

The score is... 45-0 at the time I am writing these lines ! (03/01/2016)

Ke Jie, probably the best player in the world, thinks this bot is much better than the AlphaGo version who/which played against Lee Setol in April 2016!

We still do not know bot's identity:
some believe it is the new version of "AlphaGo"(maybe one not spoiled by the humans :-)).
Others think it is a Chinese project, whereas still others suspect a Korean bot...(IMHO, there are all wrong: it is Sai - Hikaru's ghost-friend - for sure :-)

The only reserve: they are all quick games (but still...)

Read more about this here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/5l3l7e/chinese_ai_crushing_pros_...

Here are the games: http://www.go-baduk-weiqi.de/masterp-schlaegt-go-profis/

PS: one thing is sure: it is not "DeepZen", who/which has been beaten sometimes...even if not often: its score on Tygem is 126-13...

Happy new year (nevertheless ?) !!!!

5th round of the European team Championship: Belgium - Turkey 1-3

Things are getting worse, as Belgium team (Lucas +, Nelis -, Gabriel -, Joost -) lost once again, this time against Turkey on 12th of December.

More than ever, Belgium stay in the red zone.
But still: we are not yet halfway of the season...

Complete results of the round:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/rounds/346

Present standings:
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps

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