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My impression was that recently Go had fallen too...

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/03/the-e...

> The victory was not quite a Deep Blue moment; Crazy Stone was given a small handicap, and Ishida is no longer in his prime.

As I heard the story, the computer received something like 4 stones (a moderate handicap), and was playing against someone who no longer was top-of-the-world, but was still a strong player.

This is very different than beating the world champion in a fair game.

A four-stone handicap is not small: a beginning professional player could give any top Go player (there are several major championships) a run for his money with 4 stones.

Just to clarify: a beginning professional player (as in, a player who is considered of professional rank in the Go world, but just in the beginning of their career) will beat any top Go player with 99%+ certainty at 4 stones. The difference between professional players are far less than 4 stones.

If you meant a student studying to be a professional, then 4 stones would probably be true for an even chance game.

That was with a handicap, not an even starting position.

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