Lee Sedol isn’t at the top of Go ratings. How would Ke Jie fare against AlphaGo? A match against the best human player would be a better test of AlphaGo capabilities.
Honestly that hundred point difference at the top of the Go ratings isn’t really going to matter. At best, it probably means that the top player has a ten percent chance of winning a single game, instead of a two percent chance. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to hear that AlphaGo is playing at a rating in excess of four thousand, and could be expected to beat the best human players 99% of the time. Frankly, my gut instinct watching the livestream is that AlphaGo is playing at such a high level that even the players at the top of the rankings are having a hard time identifying it.
It must be very frustrating to be in that position—you’re supposedly one of the best in the world, and for the first half of the game your opponent makes mostly ok but not great moves including some likely mistakes and weird moves that seem pointless. Then near endgame you’ve somehow ended up 20 points behind with no hope of victory and you’re not even sure how it happened.
Lee Sedol isn’t at the top of Go ratings. How would Ke Jie fare against AlphaGo? A match against the best human player would be a better test of AlphaGo capabilities.
Honestly that hundred point difference at the top of the Go ratings isn’t really going to matter. At best, it probably means that the top player has a ten percent chance of winning a single game, instead of a two percent chance. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to hear that AlphaGo is playing at a rating in excess of four thousand, and could be expected to beat the best human players 99% of the time. Frankly, my gut instinct watching the livestream is that AlphaGo is playing at such a high level that even the players at the top of the rankings are having a hard time identifying it.
It must be very frustrating to be in that position—you’re supposedly one of the best in the world, and for the first half of the game your opponent makes mostly ok but not great moves including some likely mistakes and weird moves that seem pointless. Then near endgame you’ve somehow ended up 20 points behind with no hope of victory and you’re not even sure how it happened.
Update: given the most recent win by Lee Sodol, my hypothesis above seems much less likely. AlphaGo may only be in the 3600-3800 range.