54 Wins In A Row: Unknown ‘Master’ Beats World Go Champions

2017/01/04

Han Jing

An anonymous "master" has stunned the Internet with an unbeaten record of 54 Go game wins online since December 29, defeating a bunch of the world's top players including China’s No. 1, Ke Jie, South Korea’s Park Jung-hwan and Japan's Iyama Yuta.

“Master’s” latest victory was against 64-year-old Nie Weiping, China’s legendary Go player. After the win on Wednesday, “Master” sent a message to Nie, which read “Thank you, Master Nie.”In traditional Chinese.

Nie applauded its ability and thought it would stimulate human’s progress in Go field.

The unbeatable ‘Master’ has an ID registered on the online Chinese board game platforms eweiqi.com and foxwq.com. The winning streak has triggered interest in the player’s identity within the professional Go circle. It is believed to be an artificial intelligence program.

“All the patterns that human players developed over thousands of years have become vulnerable against computers, ” Ke Jie wrote on his Weibo account on December 31, “I think not even one person has touched the edge of the Go truth.”

Gu Li, also one of the top players in China, even offered a reward of 100,000 yuan (US$14,380) to anyone who can beat ‘Master’.

Shocked netizens compared the overwhelming victory as “submachine gun shots amid swordfight.” One user joked that the only way to beat the master was to pull out cables.

Actually, it is not the first time that AI has triumphed over humans. AI program AlphaGo, designed by London-based AI developer DeepMind, shocked the world by beating South Korean Lee Se-dol, one of the world's best Go players, in March.

DeepMind, bought by Google in 2014, said in its twitter account that ‘Master’ is actually AlphaGo. But the claim hasn’t been confirmed by Google.

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54 Wins In A Row: Unknown ‘Master’ Beats World Go Champions

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