South Korean Go master Lee Sedol will play his final game before retirement with the locally-developed artificial intelligence software HanDol.

The 36-year-old former world champion announced his retirement last month after realizing he was up against a foe that “cannot be defeated.” Lee made international headlines in 2016 when he won one out of five games to AlphaGo, a program developed by Google’s AI company DeepMind. He is to date the only human to ever beat the AlphaGo software.

Lee’s game with HanDol will be a three-match showdown. The first two rounds will be held on Dec. 18 and 19 at the Seoul headquarters of Bodyfriend, the massage chair maker hosting the event. The final match will take place on Dec. 21 at the Eldorado Resort in Lee’s hometown of Shinan, South Jeolla Province.

HanDol is a Go-playing AI program developed by Korean gaming company NHN in December 2017. Inspired by Lee’s match with AlphaGo, NHN began working on the software, incorporating the vast amount of data amassed from servicing its PC game Hangame Go since 1999. The company said HanDol has now reached a level on par with professional Go players.

Lee will start the game with HanDol by placing a handicap stone to offset the program’s superiority.

Like AlphaGo, HanDol is based on a machine learning algorithm that combines self-training and reinforcement learning techniques. In August, it finished third at the 2019 China Securities Cup World AI Go Open in Shandong, China. Earlier this year, it took on five of Korea’s top Go players, including then world champion, Park Jung-hwan, and beat them all.

Other Go-playing AI bots include Facebook’s open-source ELF OpenGo.

By Hong Sung-yong and Kim Hyo-jin

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