It’s possible for something to be a useful shorthand even if the underlying facts are dubious (e.g., the “let them eat cake” line doesn’t come from Marie Antoinette but nonetheless illuminates the situation at the time; frogs will jump out of water if you heat it gradually but this stands in for a useful concept).
I’m not an expert-level Go player but my general sense is that Move 37 is in this same category. It was a surprising move, but it had a limited impact on the match and was not an optimal move as scored by stronger contemporary Go engines (thought it was a very good one). It didn’t shift the probability of victory, and Sedol’s move 38 was the optimal response to it as scored by Katago. It seems to have had a psychological effect because it was so surprising, but that’s possible even if a move is literally random (as famously happened with Kasparov and Deep Blue).
You can donwload Katago and work through this yourself.
It’s possible for something to be a useful shorthand even if the underlying facts are dubious (e.g., the “let them eat cake” line doesn’t come from Marie Antoinette but nonetheless illuminates the situation at the time; frogs will jump out of water if you heat it gradually but this stands in for a useful concept).
I’m not an expert-level Go player but my general sense is that Move 37 is in this same category. It was a surprising move, but it had a limited impact on the match and was not an optimal move as scored by stronger contemporary Go engines (thought it was a very good one). It didn’t shift the probability of victory, and Sedol’s move 38 was the optimal response to it as scored by Katago. It seems to have had a psychological effect because it was so surprising, but that’s possible even if a move is literally random (as famously happened with Kasparov and Deep Blue).
You can donwload Katago and work through this yourself.