Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

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Japanese 9-dan pros and former Japanese cup holders who played against CrazyStone beat it less than 80% of the time [1], while AlphaGo's win rate against it is 80%, according to a comment below by inufu, an engineer at Google DeepMind.

If transivity applies then AlphaGo is likely stronger than the average of those former Japanese champions, including Norimoto Yoda, who is currently ranked at 187th (about 300 Elo rating below Lee Sedol and 300 above Fan Hui) [2].

There's a saying in Go circles that there is a substantial gap in playing style or intuition between pros and even top-level amateurs. Whether that is true or not, AlphaGo has definitely crossed the threshold to pro-level play in Go.

By March 2016, Google DeepMind would have improved AlphaGo somewhat at least through self-playing and perhaps more processing power.

The game with Lee Sedol will be an interesting one to watch!

[1] http://www.computer-go.info/h-c/ [2] http://www.goratings.org/

Just to clarify your comment so people aren't confused by the apparently low winning percentages, those are all 4-stone handicap games. (It's still an apples-to-apples comparison.)

I think the 80% win rate against CrazyStone is for the single-machine version. The distributed version won 100% of the time against CrazyStone and 80% of the time against the single-machine version.

Japanese 9 dan which played against CrazyStone played with handicap, it's a whole word difference.

FYI, Fan Hui, is ONLY a 2nd Dan Go player. [1]

[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Hui

2 dan pro is a much stronger strength than 2 dan amateur. The difference between a 2 dan pro and a 9 dan pro is usually just one stone handicap whereas the difference between a 2 dan amateur and a 9 dan amateur would be around 7 stones.

Closer to 2 stones between 2 dan pro & 9 dan.

You need to keep in mind that professional Dan levels aren't purely based on ELO or some other objective measure.

You'll find lots of Korean pros who got awarded their 1p for going abroad and teaching. 8p and 9p in Japan, in my recollection, are reserved for those winning one of the major tournaments and defending a title there.

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