@DialMforMara The players are now in ko, where they are both trying to avoid "repeating the board position" (which is illegal). But because they *want* to repeat the board position to gain an advantage, they have to play forcing moves elsewhere first, and come back.

It gets complicated because the forcing moves have to be worth more than "ending the ko," which either player can choose for a loss.

@DialMforMara Ko changes the character of the game completely, where players are fighting to see who can threaten each other better, instead of trying to win territory. The board can get really wacky looking after a #ko.

#thefutureofgo

@upside So now they're trying to psych each other out?

@DialMforMara @upside I feel like I should learn Go just so I can understand how Alpha Go is messing with the world's top tier players.

Commentator gasps when #AlphaGO willfully ignores a threat.

#thefutureofgo

@upside what did it do instead? (Also, let's sit back and consider the implications of calling an AI's behavior willful.)

@DialMforMara Heh, yah. #AlphaGo decided to play on the other side of the board, seems like to complicate things, but hard to understand for me 🤓

@upside It's developed insights outside the canon of Go strategies.

I'm watching a stream right now where we're talking about the cultural assumptions that underlie mainstream video games, and we're calling them "of-courses." #AlphaGo has flouted an of-course of Go.

@DialMforMara Should one try to avoid "of-courses" or break them in games?

@upside Depends on your goals. When you don't realize that of-courses exist, you get bland Stevey games like Quantum Break, or actively discriminatory ones like The Division. Setting out to break of-courses gets you Undertale if you're sufficiently careful. It is possible to use of-courses consciously to make a point about the society the player lives in, but then Gamergate tells everyone where you live.

@upside How willing you are to accept the risk of that last one depends on your own relationship to our society's of-courses.

@DialMforMara Interesting. Gamer drama feels a lot like PC/Mac wars, where people begin to define themselves by the games they play, and feel personally threatened when their fave games are critiqued.

Logically it shouldn't be a big deal, but Gamergate shows how toxic it can get. 😕

Black (#AlphaGo) strong on lower right part of the board, looking scary to me

#thefutureofgo

https://octodon.social/media/HVZJfhK6HYHsq5LpPzk

Ke Jie starts a bigger ko and the commentators are starting to talk quickly to keep up lol

#thefutureofgo

So while I was away Ke Jie (W) somehow pulled magic off in the lower right and gets a connected dragon 🤘

#thefutureofgo https://octodon.social/media/KSgitHd99bAPpV9Q66M

Leaning excitedly over the goban, Ke Jie massages his heart and exhales.

#thefutureofgo

Ke Jie (W) rocking back and forth and fiddling with his go stones.

The game is super complicated.

#thefutureofgo

#AlphaGo finished the ko with advantage, and it's looking grim for Ke Jie. His hair is looking a bit messy.

#thefutureofgo
https://octodon.social/media/Q1lodHiZWOusC-GkIOo

Ke Jie resigns with a touch of a smile.

#thefutureofgo https://octodon.social/media/q2T0RIwI3NGeiM5zz5E https://octodon.social/media/Y9zbZwpwTm_AewvGJSk

@upside did somebody win?

@DialMforMara #AlphaGo won by resignation in Match 2 due to a huge fight that broke out, which decided the game. At the press conference after, the AlphaGo devs said they've never seen such an even game up to the 100th move. As if both were playing "perfect go."

I can see why Ke Jie was smiling and excited. It must have been a blast playing a game so difficult and back-and-forth.

#thefutureofgo

@upside wow. What was the fight, and why was it the AI that had to resign?

@DialMforMara No, Ke Jie, human, resigned, because a large group of his stones became unmanageable. The fight spread over the whole board, with the life and death of huge groups of stones, for both players, in the balance.

TBH, I think due to the volatility of the game, either player could have won at once with a decisive move. It was highly complicated, way beyond my ability to grok it.