ALPHAGO TO ZERO

The Complete Games

Masterpieces

Vol. 3: AlphaGo vs. AlphaGo

by Michael Redmond 9P and Chris Garlock

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From the first AlphaGo–Lee Sedol shockwaves in 2016 through the emergence of AlphaGo Zero in 2017, Michael Redmond 9P and Chris Garlock have chronicled the transformation of Go in real time, producing a growing archive of commentaries, conversations, and analyses that document how AI reshaped the game at every level. This four-volume series brings that record together, offering a detailed look at the games, ideas, and breakthroughs that defined the AlphaGo era.

Volume 3 turns to the fifty official AlphaGo vs. AlphaGo self-play games released by DeepMind — the curated set of masterpieces that revealed, for the first time, how AlphaGo understood Go when freed from human opponents. Returning to these games years later with new tools and far deeper insight, Redmond re-examines openings, direction, timing, invasions, and endgame choices through the lens of what we now know about AI play. The result is a newly coherent view of these once-mysterious battles, presented through focused commentary, key-position diagrams, and explanations that illuminate how the moves function rather than who is “ahead.” This is where the conversation with AlphaGo finally begins to make sense — and where the path to AlphaGo Zero becomes unmistakably clear.

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Copyright Page

© 2025 Michael Redmond

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited.

Smart Go, Inc.
Salt Lake City, Utah
gobooks.com

Cover design by Mike Samuel

Conversion to Go Books by Anders Kierulf

Contents

ALPHAGO TO ZERO: The Complete Games, Vol. 3

Copyright Page

Contents

How to Use This Book

About the Authors

Introduction by Michael Redmond and Chris Garlock

Game 1

The chapters in gray are included only in the full book.

Game 2

Game 3

Game 4

Game 5

Game 6

Game 7

Game 8

Game 9

Game 10

Q & A Session

Game 11

Game 12

Game 13

Game 14

Game 15

Game 16

Game 17

Game 18

Game 19

Game 20

Game 21

Game 22

Game 23

Game 24

Game 25

Game 26

Game 27

Game 28

Game 29

Game 30

Game 31

Game 32

Game 33

Game 34

Game 35

Game 36

Game 37

Game 38

Game 39

Game 40

Game 41

Game 42

Game 43

Game 44

Game 45

Game 46

Game 47

Game 48

Game 49

Game 50

Beyond the Official Fifty: Variations and Echoes

Game 51

Game 52

Game 53

Game 54

Game 55

Ghosts in the Machine: AlphaGo Zero vs. Zero (40-block)

Buy This Book

About Go Books

How to Use This Book

This e-book takes full advantage of the multi-platform power of electronic books, providing playable game diagrams and links to video game commentaries as well as hyperlinked text and photos.

EPUB

This book is available for the SmartGo One app on iOS and Mac (see gobooks.com/devices.html) as well as EPUB for any platform. For reading as EPUB, please check gobooks.com/epub.html for our up-to-date recommendations on EPUB readers that work best with this book.

If your tablet is set to dark mode, then you can’t see the diagrams as all the black lines and stones disappear. Changing it to regular mode makes the diagrams normal.

Diagrams

Review each diagram and the comments, then use the controls (see below) to play and replay the sequences.
TAP on the board to bring up the move controls:

▶ To play through the moves automatically

＜ To peel back (reverse) the moves, one at a time

＞ To go forward in the move sequence, one at a time

Videos and SGFs

To see video commentaries on each game, click on the screengrab (or link) at the beginning of each commentary.

Comments, corrections and suggestions welcome: please email them to us at books@gobooks.com.

About the Authors

Michael Redmond 9P

MICHAEL REDMOND is a top professional go player as well as a popular commentator. Born in California, he moved to Japan in 1977 at the age of 14 to begin studying to be a professional go player. Redmond became a pro in 1981, made the quarterfinal in the fourth Fujitsu Cup World Go Championship in 1991 and the quarterfinal in the fifth Dongyang Securities World Cup in 1993. He has participated in the final sections of 16 international pro tournaments and in 2000 was promoted to 9P, the highest professional rank. In 2018, Redmond achieved 600 wins in official pro tournaments. A longtime popular TV commentator in Japan – in 2000 he won the TV Program Producer Society Prize – Redmond teamed up with Chris Garlock to provide the English-language live video commentary for the historic 2016 match between Lee Sedol 9P and the AlphaGo AI, as well as the subsequent series of AlphaGo commentaries on the AGA’s YouTube channel. Redmond lives near Tokyo, Japan.

Chris Garlock

CHRIS GARLOCK is the Managing Editor of the American Go E-Journal and Vice President of Communications for the American Go Association. The E-Journal is the most widely-read English language go publication in the world and Garlock coordinates its online and broadcast coverage of go tournaments and events. He’s helped pioneer electronic and broadcast go coverage, including live broadcasts of top-board games with real-time commentary from venues around the world. An amateur 3-dan go player and avid tennis (and now pickleball) player, Garlock lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Lisa, an art therapist.

Introduction

by Michael Redmond
and Chris Garlock

Garlock and Redmond

When we sat down to talk about this volume, it had been quite a while since Volume 2 appeared. Michael and I have had to set Volume 3 aside more than once as other, more urgent projects demanded attention. So first, our thanks to readers for their patience — and for the encouragement that helped bring this work to completion.

Now, nearly a decade after the AlphaGo matches first stunned the world and changed Go forever, Michael Redmond 9P has spent thousands of hours revisiting every stage of the saga — from its first human encounters to the mysterious games it played against itself. In this conversation, recorded as we put the final touches on Masterpieces, we talked about what it means to come back to those fifty self-play games with new tools, new perspective, and perhaps most importantly, new understanding.

Chris Garlock:
Michael, you’ve been working on these AlphaGo commentaries for years now. How did it feel to come back to the self-play games after all this time?

Michael Redmond:
When I finished the Master volume, I honestly needed a break. At that point, I was exhausted — and, to be frank, a bit negative about doing another book. The AlphaGo games were so strange, so different from anything humans had done before, that I kept wondering if I was missing something or if the program was just making mistakes.

Chris:
Right — I remember you saying you thought it was “messing with you.”

Michael:
Exactly. I was trying to find errors that didn’t exist. The moves looked so unusual that I couldn’t make sense of them. I had to invent stories to explain what was happening. But going back now, with better tools and a deeper understanding of how these networks think, I can finally see what they were trying to do. It’s like when you start learning a new language — at first it’s just noise, but then, little by little, you start hearing meaning.

Chris:
So these fifty self-play games — why are they so important?

Michael:
They’re the official record. DeepMind released them as the complete set they wanted the world to see — the “AlphaGo vs. AlphaGo” match that defines this period. There were other games floating around, but these fifty were carefully chosen, and they really are masterpieces.

Chris:
You’ve said that these games changed the way professionals understand Go.

Michael:
They did. Almost overnight, professional play jumped more than a stone in strength. Everyone started using ideas from these games, even if we didn’t completely understand them yet. It broke the rating systems — everyone improved, but the numbers didn’t move.

Chris:
And what about you personally? What did you take from spending so much time with them?

Michael:
It helped me catch up. Younger players learn faster, and they grew up with AI tools. For me, going through these games move by move was how I learned to see Go in the new way — to understand the logic behind what AlphaGo was doing instead of just reacting to it.

Chris:
It sounds like this book isn’t just about what AlphaGo did — it’s also about how you learned to hear that new language.

Michael:
That’s right. When I first commented on these games, I was still trying to figure out who was ahead or where the mistake was — the human way of thinking. Now I’m focusing on why the moves function, how they create balance and flow. It’s not about winning by half a point; it’s about how each move speaks to the rest of the board.

Chris:
So in a sense, this is the first volume where you can really talk with AlphaGo — where you understand what it’s saying.

Michael:
Yes. These games are the moment when the conversation begins to make sense.

In the pages that follow, we walk through the fifty official AlphaGo-vs-AlphaGo games DeepMind released — the set that defined this era. Rather than chase who’s “ahead,” Michael’s commentaries focus on how each move functions: direction of play, shape, timing, and the quiet endgame choices that turn balance into margin. Diagrams highlight key inflection points; variations are kept purposeful, pointing to ideas you can test on your own board. Read sequentially, the games reveal a vocabulary — openings simplified to expose whole-board intent, invasions that trade certainty for initiative, and endgames that prefer clarity over spectacle. This is the conversation as it finally becomes legible — and a prelude to Volume 4, where AlphaGo Zero speaks that language with no human accent at all.

– Michael Redmond and Chris Garlock
December 2025, Tokyo and Washington, DC

Game 1

CLICK HERE to watch the Game 1 video

AlphaGo demonstrates innovative tactics for White against the Mini-Chinese opening. This commentary closely examines the fight in the lower left corner, focusing on a middle-game three-three point invasion. While it may seem new to casual players, this version of the invasion is commonly played by strong players and is certainly worth understanding.

White: AlphaGo
Black: AlphaGo
Komi: 7½ points

Moves 1–12

＞＜ ▶︎

Starting with the attachments at 10 and 12, AlphaGo demonstrated how it handles the Chinese openings by playing lightly and flexibly within Black’s sphere of influence. While White sacrificed locally, the goal was to shift the focus to areas of the board where White had more control.

Moves 13–27

＞＜ ▶︎

Moves 28–30

＞＜ ▶︎

The proverb says, “Sabaki starts with a tsuke”, and AlphaGo showed us an example with White 28, 30, and the following sequence.

Moves 31–46

＞＜ ▶︎

Moves 47–49

＞＜ ▶︎

The combination of Black 47 and 49 was a tesuji. The ladder at A was relevant in some variations. While White could have allowed Black to live in the corner, the actual game showed us the most likely course of events, in which Black improved its position on the outside while sacrificing the corner.

＞＜ ▶︎

Simply invading the corner would not have been good for Black in this case where White could attack on the outside. 3 and 4 became miai, and Black could not cut White.

Move 50

＞＜ ▶︎

＞＜ ▶︎

If White had played at 1, this would have prevented Black from connecting underneath at 8 while also protecting against the cut at 3. In this case, Black would have simply sacrificed the stone in the corner while reinforcing Black’s group on the outside. This sequence in the lower left corner might be called the basic joseki. Looking at the overall position, Black’s group was strengthened to the point that the fight on the outside was close to even.

＞＜ ▶︎

If White had played at 1, this would have depended on the ladder at 3 favoring White. Therefore, Black needed to check this ladder before playing at A, and since the ladder favors Black, this diagram is bad for White.

Move 51

＞＜ ▶︎

＞＜ ▶︎

If Black had covered at 1 first and then cut at 3, White’s cut at 4 would have weakened Black’s outside group by reducing its liberties. Black would need to defend with 5 and 7, giving White time to defend at 8, taking a strong position on the left side while White still had an advantage in the corner.

Move 52

＞＜ ▶︎

＞＜ ▶︎

If White had connected at 1, this would have been an attempt to stop Black from living in the corner. Black would then have sufficient liberties to push at 2; if White answered at 4, Black could cut at 5. Black secured a strong position on the outside, and still had a seki or ko in the corner with 16 and 18, which need not be played immediately. This diagram shows how Black’s main goal was to strengthen the group on the outside. The quality of White’s position on the left was also important, and the life or death of the Black group in the corner was not the main focus.

Moves 53–58

＞＜ ▶︎

Move 59

＞＜ ▶︎

While covering at A might seem to have been the intuitive move, Black 59 was more effective in creating two threats at B and C.

＞＜ ▶︎

If Black had covered at 1, White 2 would have killed Black in the corner, and Black could not surround White on either side. Black did not get enough on the outside to justify sacrificing the corner.

Move 60

＞＜ ▶︎

＞＜ ▶︎

If White had played 1 and 3 to control the left side, Black would have cut White off at 4. After White defended in the corner, Black 16 threatened to cut White off on the right, forcing White to defend at 21. Later in the game, the corner could become a seki or a ko, maybe with Black playing at A.

Moves 61–63

＞＜ ▶︎

Moves 64–65

＞＜ ▶︎

Black could have lived in the corner by playing at A, but Black 65 was the more important move that gave Black control of the left side.

Moves 66–82

＞＜ ▶︎

With 82 White finally killed Black in the corner. After this White had a lead in territory.

Moves 83–100

＞＜ ▶︎

When White cut at 100, this started a potential semeai on the left side.

Moves 101–109

＞＜ ▶︎

After Black 109, if White had connected at A, Black would have played at B for a semeai.

Moves 110–116

＞＜ ▶︎

The combination of 112 and 116 was a tesuji that enabled White to connect on the left.

Moves 117–125

＞＜ ▶︎

The game was still close after the trade to 125.

Moves 126–144

＞＜ ▶︎

White lived on the top side.

Moves 145–148

＞＜ ▶︎

White 148 was the biggest point, and the rest was endgame.

Moves 149–175

＞＜ ▶︎

Moves 176–200

＞＜ ▶︎

Moves 201–225

＞＜ ▶︎

Moves 226–250

＞＜ ▶︎

Moves 251–275

＞＜ ▶︎

White won by 0.25 stones, or half a point in Japanese counting.

275 moves. White wins by resignation.

AlphaGo to Zero – The Complete Games

Volume 4

Ghosts in the Machine: AlphaGo Zero vs. Zero (40-block)

The final chapter of the AlphaGo to Zero saga takes us deeper still — into the realm of pure self-creation. In Ghosts in the Machine, Michael and Chris explore the eerie beauty of AlphaGo Zero, the version that learned Go without any human input, playing only against itself.

Freed from human precedent and guided solely by reinforcement learning, these “Zero vs. Zero” battles reveal a new kind of Go — stripped of convention, haunting in its precision, and often unsettling in its simplicity. Redmond’s commentary, focused on how the moves function rather than who is “ahead,” offers his most distilled insights yet into the logic and mystery of AI play.

This is the endgame of the AlphaGo era — a mirror held up to our understanding of intelligence, creativity, and the game that taught us both.