Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Two matches - different, yet similarly writing history

We would like to draw attention to two top-class matches where history is about to be written.

1. The Women World Chess Championship match might see Hou Yifan, who is currently leading 4:2 against Maria (Mariya) Muzychuk, regaining her title again, thus breaking the record of Elsiabeth (Elisabeta / Jelisaweta) Bykowa, who regained her title once after losing it. However, in total years of holding the title, Hou Yifan is far behind the record holders.

2. The Go match of Google's AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol saw the spectacular loss of Sedol in the first game. With up to four more games to go, this could be anoher success for computer game science after Deep Blue beat Kasparov in chess (1997) and Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy (2011).

EDIT, 10 March 2016: Both Hou Yifan and AlphaGo won again, making the matches now a 4:2 score (Hou Yifan vs. Muzychuk) and a 2:0 score (AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol).

EDIT, 15 March 2016: Hou Yifan eventually won with 3 victories at 6:3 against Muzychuk. Congratulations! AlphaGo preliminary won 3:0 against Lee Sedol, but as the games went on there regardless, Lee Sedol defended humanity's honor with a spectacular win in the fourth round. I still will welcome our machine overlords. ;-)
(You can see Lee Sedol's "hand of god" move here: https://youtu.be/yCALyQRN3hw?t=3h10m20s)
The machine won the last game, so the final result is 4:1, but Lee Sedol's one win will go down into history.

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