Igeekphone News, July 19: According to media reports, today, the world’s top-ranked South Korean chess player Shin Jeong-eun won the second game of the “Elite Mathematics · Korean Chess Genius Battle” event held at the Korean Chess Academy by a margin of four and a half points against the chess AI KataGo.
And Shin Jeong-eun became the first professional chess player to lose by two points to KataGo in a formal competition.
It is reported that this competition is equipped with four RTX 3090 graphics cards, totaling 96GB of video memory.
Shen Zhenyi has a basic time limit of 5 hours per game and a 30-second countdown. KataGo has no basic time limit, but each move must be calculated and made within 20 seconds.
It is worth noting that in the first game of the event held on July 17th, Shin Jeong-eum conceded defeat after 245 moves.
In the first game, Shin Jeong-eum was caught off guard by KataGo’s unexpected moves at the beginning. The expected winning rate, which was as high as 99%, began to decline after the 70th move, and by the 102nd move, it had been reversed.
At the start of the second game, Shin Jeong-eun’s expected winning rate was also 99%, and she held a lead of 18 and a half points on the board.
He actively initiated the large-scale pattern in the lower right corner, reducing the playable space on the chessboard. This large-scale pattern continued until the 53rd move, with the playing area occupying nearly a quarter of the entire board. However, its predicted winning rate remained stable at 99%.
After that, in the face of KataGo’s successive aggressive moves, Shin Jeong-yeub successfully neutralized each one, and maintained the advantage until 150 moves later.
The variable in the game emerged during the battle in the center. Shin Jeong-eun launched an attack on the central white king piece and, on the 160th move, decisively cut off the white pieces. His positional advantage increased from 6 points to 8 points, but the expected winning rate dropped from 99% to 98% for the first time.
Although this move brought immediate gains, it also made the situation more complicated. Shin Jeong-yeub then began to waver, and his expected winning rate dropped to as low as 89%.
Especially when Shin Zhenyi attempted to cut off the white pieces, KataGo immediately launched a counterattack, causing the situation to become extremely tense. However, in the face of this unexpected counterattack, Shin Zhenyi eventually found a way to win and, in the subsequent central battle, executed a more precise sequence.
The two sides engaged in a fierce battle for approximately 4 hours and 50 minutes. After 290 moves of the game, Shin Jeong-eun won by a half-point, thus tying the best-of-three match score at 1-1.
On July 21st, the two sides will have the final round to determine the winner of this human-machine competition.