> Also, the human played a strategy tailored to that huge initial advantage. He said that the AI did not handle this particularly well, and played high probability moves instead of trying to lure him into a mistake.

Yeah, katago's training is not really focused at all on handicap games, because it's by nature learning from even games against similar-strength opponents.

It doesn't have specific training from playing in a way to exploit a weaker player. In a handicap game you have to give your opponent opportunities to fuck up if you want to play optimally.

If a move loses 0.0005 points if the opponent plays optimally, katago won't play it even if there's ~zero chance a weaker player would play it right.

There have been go AIs that tried to train more directly on uneven opponents, one called "sai" comes to mind, but katago has huge advantages otherwise and won out over the others (for very good reason, it's a great project).