Using a self-created variant on the game of Go called “Coupon Go”, Elwyn Berlekamp, author of the seminal book series Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays, deconstructs evaluating a Go position at a lecture in Berkeley. In Coupon Go, players may opt to make a move or take the top of a series of descending valued point coupons. This helps evaluate the actual point value of moves made on the board.

It’s fascinating, while a little sad to realize that someday, Go will also be just one more math problem. Here’s the first of four videos:

(source)

Update: and a few hours later, I find out that yet another Go professional has fallen to a computer playing Gowhich learned using something called the Monte Carlo algorithm. (source)