WUZHEN, China, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Go player Ke Jie, current world No. 1, admitted defeat during the mid-game of his second duel against computer program AlphaGo here on Thursday.
Having lost the first game of the best-of-three match here on Tuesday with the narrowest margin, Ke, 19, had a very close call to a chance of winning AlphaGo today.
"I was very nervous as I thought I had an actual chance at winning," said Ke who tried to calm his pounding heart by pressing his chest during the match. "And, because of this intensity I made a few regretful moves. I guess that is exactly what we can call a human weakness."
According to Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind Technology, this match was the best eye opener in which he described the match to be from the future.
"As we were in the control room looking at what AlphaGo's evaluation is saying; the evaluation: win rate, for roughly 50 moves, it thought that Ke Jie has been playing perfectly. And it agreed with all the moves, then, for the first roughly 100 moves, it is the closest game we have seen anyone play against the master version of AlphaGo."
The AlphaGo team did not share information regarding the fluctuation of win rate during the match, while for Ke, the outcome was much better than he had anticipated.
Knowing this master version, Ke shared that he thought of little to a chance of winning before the match.
"Today's game has been the best encouragement to me," said Ke.
Hassabis twitted after the match, describing the game to be amazing and complex.
"Ke Jie pushed AlphaGo right to the limit," he wrote.
The third and final round of Ke Jie versus AlphaGo will take place here on Saturday.