Cho Chi-hun competing with 'Japanese AlphaGo'

Cho Chi-hun

By Yoon Ja-young

Professional go master Cho Chi-hun, known as Cho Chikun in Japan, is drawing attention for matches with DeepZenGo, an artificial intelligence machine developed in Japan. He is waiting for the third and the final match after a victory and a defeat against the go-playing artificial intelligence program.

The 60-year-old go master was defeated by DeepZenGo in the second match held at a hotel in downtown Tokyo, Sunday. In the first match held the previous day, Cho defeated the computer program after three-and-a-half hours. He was struggling in the beginning, but succeeded in turning the game around by taking advantage of the program’s mistakes. The third game is scheduled for Wednesday.

Cho is a legend in go. His total titles tally stands at 74, the record-high in the history of the game in Japan.

Born in Busan in 1956, he showed a great talent for go since he was very young. He was sent to Japan at the age of six, where his elder brother was studying go. He joined Minoru Kitani’s school, which has nurtured many famous professional go players. He was the youngest student there ever.

He debuted as a professional in 1968, the youngest professional player ever in the modern go arena at the age of 11 years and 9 months. Cho reigned on the Japanese go scene for the next decades, becoming the first player to hold the top three titles.

After his defeat to DeepZenGo, Cho said he was too obsessed with winning the game, which led to his defeat. He said he should have had a more carefree attitude. DeepZenGo was developed by a research team at Tokyo University, based on Deep Learning technology where the computer program improves itself by self-learning. It is a Japanese version of AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence program developed by Google, which got the spotlight by defeating Korean go grandmaster Lee Se-dol in games held in Seoul last March. Lee won only one of the five matches against the artificial intelligence program, which shocked many go enthusiasts nationwide.