Jesse Gersenson wrote:Uri Blass wrote:
The number is the only thing that I can understand because I understand nothing about the game.
I only know the rules.
Not having the number means that watching is not interesting to 99% of the people who do not know go or hardly know the rules of go.
The commentator gives his assessment of the game position, once every 10 or so moves.
Surely the assessment of a 9-dan pro is better than the computer eval.
Uri referred to the specific eval of AlphaGo, which is much more relevant than the opinions given during the game by both 9p pro Go commentators I saw in two different live feeds (DeepMind and AGA). The usual live feed with the American 9p commentator was especially in need of some clearer assessments. But it seems many 9p players are too confused to even say who has clear advantage until very close to the end of the game.
I observed a curiosity: strong amateur level Crazy Stone and Zenith saw clear advantage of AlphaGo at least from middlegame in these 2 games with Lee Sedol. Also, they saw the pretty early clear advantage of AlphaGo in games against Fan Hui, all 5 of them. In these games I used a post-mortem analysis, but based on that, if I can manage, I will check a bit with a real-time analysis using these "weak" tools (they are anyway much better than me). Why these "weak" engines seem to see better the outcome than some 9p pros is a mystery to me.
I expect Lee Sedol to try to make a difference in opening/early midgame, as it seems (again from engine analysis, not human pros) that it's the only game stage where he stands a chance. Maybe he will play some weird opening, let's see.
Further, in the press conference google guy said they weren't confident of the machine's eval function, which would be another reason not to show the value.
I don't know much about go either but watching today's commentary improved my play 200 points?!