Foreign News

There was an emergency online meeting of EGF members on Thursday 3 March. Most European Countries were present.

The meeting agreed to suspend Russia and Belarus from the EGF, but not to expel them.

All EGF events currently scheduled for Russia and Belarus were to be re-allocated.

Russian and Belarusian players will be allowed to participate in EGF events under a neutral banner.

The AlphaGo v Lee Sedol match is now less than 24 hours away. Are you ready? Will you be getting up early? What are you planning for the weekend? Watch our status page here.

At the Press Conference in Seoul this morning, Alphabet (parent company of Google) executive chairman Eric Schmidt said “The winner here, no matter who wins, is humanity”.

Lee Sedol seemed very confident from the various Korean news items, although he's backtracked a little at this Press Conference, being quoted by the BBC as saying "Playing against a machine is very different from an actual human opponent. Normally, you can sense your opponent’s breathing, their energy. And lots of times you make decisions which are dependent on the physical reactions of the person you’re playing against.

The following details of the match have been announced today:

The matches will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel, Seoul, starting at 1pm local time (4am GMT) on the following days:

• Wednesday, March 9: First match
• Thursday, March 10: Second match
• Saturday, March 12: Third match
• Sunday, March 13: Fourth match
• Tuesday, March 15: Fifth match

The games will be even (no handicap), with $1 million in prize money for the winner. If AlphaGo wins, the prize money will be donated to UNICEF, STEM and Go charities. The matches will be played under Chinese rules with a komi of 7.5 (the compensation points the player who goes second receives at the end of the match). Each player will receive two hours per match with three x 60­ seconds byoyomi.

The ancient Chinese game of Go is one of the last games where the best human players can still beat the best artificial intelligence players. Last year, the Facebook AI Research team started creating an AI that can learn to play Go.

Scientists have been trying to teach computers to win at Go for 20 years. We're getting close, and in the past six months we've built an AI that can make moves in as fast as 0.1 seconds and still be as good as previous systems that took years to build. Our AI combines a search-based approach that models every possible move as the game progresses along with a pattern matching system built by our computer vision team.

The researcher who works on this, Yuandong Tian, sits about 20 feet from my desk. I love having our AI team right near me so I can learn from what they're working on.

You can learn more about this research here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.06410

[He also posted a video: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10102619979032811/]

The Facebook AI Research group have submitted this paper for publication at ICLR 2016 (a conference in Puerto Rico in May). So the rumours of their developing a Go-playing program are correct!

As they say - it's not up to the best commercial programs yet, but it's probably around 4 Dan ...

Better Computer Go Player with Neural Network and Long-term Prediction.

Play it on KGS - darkforest and darkfores1.

The 5th season of this championship is about to commence and we're pleased to announce our team, captained again by Chris Bryant.

The team and the match schedule can be seen here.

Please give them your support - they'll need it since League C is more difficult than previously, with a strong team from South Africa joining for the first time.

A report on the recent EGF AGM is now available in our members area.

The Nihon Ki-in, in association with the Sasakawa Foundation, would like to invite THREE students under the age of 24, who are promising players in British Go, to visit Japan in October for some extensive Go studying and have sent us the following invitation:

1. Our SUPPORT

1) Air ticket
We will provide up to JPY 120,000 per student for the air ticket.
Students will arrange their flights and give us a copy of the ticket receipts. Upon our receipt of these receipts in Tokyo, we will provide grant assistance up to JPY 120,000 per student.

2) Accommodation
We will provide them with accommodation during their stay in Japan from 2nd to 13th October. They will stay at our designated accommodation in Tokyo, this might include sharing a triple-bed room.

3) Transportation

From Martin Stiassny, President EGF

International University Go Tournament (for students only)

Just now this tournament is running in Hongkong for the first time. About 10 seats were reserved for Europe in this completely new tournament under the lead of the Ing-Foundation. As far as I know at least 4 players from Europe are participating. Similar to the WAGC the organizers don’t pay the travelling expenses, but all local costs. This tournament is not only reserved for strong players, every student can participate. In Korea I talked to Mr. Minghaw Ying, the son of the late Mr. Ing Chang-ki. He explained that this tournament would happen every year in the first half of July, 2015 in Taiwan (city is not decided yet). After 2016 he plans to organize this tournament in other countries than Japan, Korea and China.

The European Go Federation is proud to announce the start of the certification of European professional Go players. This is in cooperation with CEGO, the EGF's main sponsor, and only possible thanks to their initiative and generosity.

For full details see http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/