Whad did you think of the Sedol-AlphaGo commentaries

[daal]

I watched the "official" broadcast with Michael Redmond and Chris Garlock, and I enjoyed it. My feeling after these five commentaries is that it is a shame that we in the West don't get a chance to hear Michael Redmond more often. Watching the games through the filter of what he showed to be the true issues that the players were occupied with made the games much clearer and more interesting.

I have heard some negative sentiments about Garlock's role, but I don't share them. I felt that he and Redmond made a good team, and that Garlock's visible excitement echoed my own feelings. He also did a good job making sure that there was something for everybody in the broadcasts, and my sense is that it was an attractive event for strong players and newbies alike.

I didn't watch the AGA broadcasts with Myungwan Kim and others, nor any of the non-English ones but I do plan on checking some of them out in the next few days. What did you think of the broadcasts? Which ones did you like? Were they detailed enough? Did they offer what you wanted? Do you think they were useful for promoting go?

[Euphony]

I agree that Garlock was playing the humble facilitator and think he did a good job. I also enjoyed hearing some of the history, little tidbits about origins of words and ideas, from Redmond. This has been an extraordinary event, and great fun to watch live.

I did discover that when everything is given to me easily, like watching Redmond's commentary, I do a lot less of my own thinking, as when I just see the moves and the faces of the players. So I think from a go perspective, it may be best to at first just see the moves of the game, do my own analysis, then check the analysis of Redmond, but regardless the commentary was excellent.

[tj86430]

I only watched Garlock&Redmond. I really enjoyed Redmond's analysis, I found them easy to follow even at my level. I feel that Garlock did ok, not excellent but not bad either. The only thing I thought sounded somewhat silly/strange to me was when he started thinking about how AlphaGo would resign.

[Kirby]

I enjoyed commentary from three sources (in order of time spent viewing): BadukTV, the Official AGA Youtube Channel w/ Andrew Jackson and Kim Myungwan, and the DeepMind commentary featuring Chris Garlock and Michael Redmond.

All commentary was enjoyable, but for different reasons.
* BadukTV: This commentary had the most variations. Commentary was good, and they sometimes played out sequences that seemed better to me than what was played in the game. The commercials and music during breaks were cool, too. They'd play clips of previous press interviews from the earlier games, and it was generally motivating to watch.

* The Official AGA Youtube Channel: I know Andrew Jackson in person, so that's part of the reason it is entertaining to watch. Andrew and Myungwan are a funny combo, and sometimes it's enjoyable to listen to. The chat was fun to watch, because several hundred people would leave comments about their thoughts on the game. Also, Myungwan often had more variations than the DeepMind channel.

* DeepMind Channel: Chris and Michael made a good combo. And I realized that Michael Redmond is funnier than I realized. He was fun to listen to, and I liked the side comments (e.g. "That's why it's so easy to play against you!"). Chris did a good job, too. They did a bit more talking than variations for my taste, but I think it was a good thing, because many people watching that channel might not know about Go. They explained things in an easy-to-understand way.

---

If any of these three commentaries had been the only commentary available for the match, I would have been fully satisfied - they were all very enjoyable.

Having all three available to watch was even more excellent.

It was also fun to toggle back and forth to compare reactions of different players during the game. For example, I saw Lee Sedol's move 78 of game 4 first on BadukTV - the 8d commentator played a similar variation prior to Lee Sedol's move, and seemed surprised when Lee Sedol actually played the move. Later, I replayed the same move on the Official AGA Youtube Channel. I noticed that Myungwan actually tried out the same move prior to Lee Sedol's playing it. It was amusing to watch his reaction after the computer responded incorrectly. Then, I watched the same clip on the DeepMind channel. Michael Redmond's reaction was also interesting.

All in all, no complaints. Except for lack of sleep last week.

[RobertJasiek]

c't stream game 1: c't and Christoph Gerlach explained well for newbies / techies, with the exception of minor rules mistakes in the explanations.

Ke Jie stream: I could not watch because Flash failed to work. Flash is a security risk anyway, so it was a terrible decision to use it. According to short translations by Laurent Heiser, Ke's comments must have been very good for dans. Too bad that they used the wrong software, as if they had never heard of HTML 5.

Other Asian streams: I was too busy with the other sources to try them.

Redmond stream: punctual, full coverage, good pronunciation, on average below my level but partly something to learn for me. It was announced that the stream would also be for beginners, so I simply tolerated the level, however, the positional judgement might as well have been entirely omitted and the gained time used for other topics. Garlock was simply needed as co-speaker so that Redmond need not speak for several hours nonstop. The special guests were fun watching. The waiting music could have been better. The press conferences are a topic of their own.

Kim stream: one hour delay, breaks technical difficulties, co-speaker posing cute questions. Kim exhausted at times, weak English pronunciation, emphasising manners of the program too much, not knowing well how bots think, mostly reasonable positional judgement even with a few good hints at dynamic aspects, average to good sequences for dans unless (see before), quitting seconds before the resignation. Rare, short i terventions by Hyehyeng [?] very good sequences. In conclusion, difficult to watch but on average better learning for dans than in the Redmond stream.

KGS Tictactoe: good for current position watching but overrun, so kibitzing would not be much fun. 1 move missing but otherwise easy SGF saving.

There have also been a few blogs, mailing list, private emails, web news etc. but those are other topics.

All in all good live access to the event with mediocre commentaries from a dan POV. The best in Asian streams was not universally available. Thanks to the self-organisation of all us watching it was possible to find out the URLs of the Western streams just barely in time.

[oren]

I watched Redmond and Garlock a bit and plan to watch Kim Myungwan later.

There were nicovideo broadcasts that were somewhat interactive by a variety of Japanese pros and an Igo Premium broadcast that had top pros like Ishida, Takao, and O Meien commenting on the games (one on each game).

I mostly enjoyed watching the Igo Premium, but they were all great.

[Javaness2]

I saw some people complaining about Garlock talking, but he was doing his job well from what I saw.
Of course,normally his role is taken on by a much stronger 'hot' woman, but these are the days of equal opportunities.

[Elom]

c't stream game 1: c't and Christoph Gerlach explained well for newbies / techies, with the exception of minor rules mistakes in the explanations.

Ke Jie stream: I could not watch because Flash failed to work. Flash is a security risk anyway, so it was a terrible decision to use it. According to short translations by Laurent Heiser, Ke's comments must have been very good for dans. Too bad that they used the wrong software, as if they had never heard of HTML 5.

Other Asian streams: I was too busy with the other sources to try them.

Redmond stream: punctual, full coverage, good pronunciation, on average below my level but partly something to learn for me. It was announced that the stream would also be for beginners, so I simply tolerated the level, however, the positional judgement might as well have been entirely omitted and the gained time used for other topics. Garlock was simply needed as co-speaker so that Redmond need not speak for several hours nonstop. The special guests were fun watching. The waiting music could have been better. The press conferences are a topic of their own.

Kim stream: one hour delay, breaks technical difficulties, co-speaker posing cute questions. Kim exhausted at times, weak English pronunciation, emphasising manners of the program too much, not knowing well how bots think, mostly reasonable positional judgement even with a few good hints at dynamic aspects, average to good sequences for dans unless (see before), quitting seconds before the resignation. Rare, short i terventions by Hyehyeng [?] very good sequences. In conclusion, difficult to watch but on average better learning for dans than in the Redmond stream.

KGS Tictactoe: good for current position watching but overrun, so kibitzing would not be much fun. 1 move missing but otherwise easy SGF saving.

There have also been a few blogs, mailing list, private emails, web news etc. but those are other topics.

All in all good live access to the event with mediocre commentaries from a dan POV. The best in Asian streams was not universally available. Thanks to the self-organisation of all us watching it was possible to find out the URLs of the Western streams just barely in time.

Thank you for sharing your impressions and insights, but I fear that I now cannot expel the image of a Deep-Neural Network trained AI film-critic from the future sitting at the keyboard from my mind!

[quantumf]

The deepmind broadcast (redmond/garlock) was fantastic, easily the best part of this whole week. Wow, to have pro games commentated with this level of quality and professionalism (in the media sense as opposed to go sense) was an incredible treat, if only we could have more of it.

The Kim Myungwan commentary was unwatchable - I find his voice grating, and the whole thing was painfully amateurish by comparison.

[Monadology]

I much preferred the AGA Channel's commentary to the DeepMind commentary, especially in the following two cases:

When Lee Hajin and Kim Myungwan were commenting together (I believe it was Game 4).

When Cho Hye-yeon and Andrew Jackson were commenting together on Game 3. My father said he really enjoyed this commentary after switching over from DeepMind's, since even though it was above his level there was a lot more enthusiasm.

I don't at all mind the casual feel and lack of high quality audio. I like good synergy between the commentators and energy/interest more than either of those things. I found that syngergy was often lacking with Garlock and Redmond. I'll confess, I was one of the folks who wasn't very fond of Garlock's performance, though he did seem to improve a lot in the later games. I liked Redmond, but it's hard to judge too much without seeing him with a co-commentator that I felt worked well with him.

The main complaint I would have with the AGA channel's commentary was that they always started an hour late. This ends up leading to a ton of analysis of earlier plays while things are getting tense on the real board. Sometimes this created a nearly unbearable tension and eliminated the 'live' feel enough that I switched to the DeepMind commentary and came back when things had caught up.

[longshanks]

I really enjoyed the DeepMind livestream. I didn't know there was a Ke Jie stream, does anyone have a link to this? I kinda tried to follow the GoGameGuru commentary on another device; I found this very useful too -- well done GoGameGuru and I see the numbers of new visitors to your site has spiked!

I thought Michael Redmond did a good job of explaining the moves and thought processes though I did find Chris Garlock a little irritating at first. I got used to him by the last game and maybe a lot of what annoyed me was him trying to act (I hope it was acting!) dumb to get Michael to answer questions viewers themselves might have in their mind. But then, I don't think it's practical to aim the stream at complete novices much the same way you wouldn't expect the commentary to be such in, say, a Cricket match etc.

Interestingly, I was on the stream early and most of the time it just said 1 viewer which I guess was me! Closer to the time it clocked tens of thousands of viewers. I guess the quoted 60M viewers came from sources other than the official YouTube stream though the 30M outside of Asia figures were certainly impressive.

I'd certainly pay to have a service like that full time. Is the BadukTV UK like that? If so I'll have to subscribe.

[Uberdude]

The Kim Myungwan commentary was unwatchable - I find his voice grating, and the whole thing was painfully amateurish by comparison.

When I first watched/listened to Myungwan Kim a few years ago I found him hard to understand, but now it's fine for me; probably a combination of his English pronunciation improving and my ear for foreign accents improving. (I liked both commentaries).

[Sennahoj]

I mostly watched the official stream with Redmond and Garlock, and sometimes switched to the AGA stream. I think Redmond was pretty good, but I found Garlock very annoying, especially the first couple of games.

I'm guessing he's not very experienced in the roll, but it really bugged me that he was constantly trying to sound like he was on American TV, talking to channel zappers -- frequently interrupting Redmond with irrelevant stuff like "And for all folks that just joined us! My name is bla bla..." and "You are watching the game between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol!".

Dude, I know what I'm watching, please be quiet and let the pro speak. And yes, I know already that it's a historic event -- that's why I'm here! I think it's pretty low probability to find yourself watching this youtube stream by accident.

Garlock also seemed very concerned with being up-to-date on the demonstration board, and often interrupted Redmond with this as well. That's kind of silly, and indicates to me that he can't have watched many commented pro game broadcasts before. The commentators often lag behind while exploring interesting variations, and that is absolutely no problem since the real board is also in view at the same time.

[Uberdude]

Taking a couple of minutes to explain that when the score is 1-0 to AlphaGo, if it wins the next game it will be 2-0 to AlphaGo but if Lee Sedol wins it will be 1-1 and that's quite a big difference was both amusing and frustrating .

[Simba]

I thought Garlock was pretty terrible in the first two but improved after that with the feedback he received which was excellent to see and I'm sure he'll do better in future because of it.

The art of good commentating is appreciating that silence is valuable. Throughout, it felt that Garlock would try to fill any semblance of silence with whatever rubbish floated into his mind at that point. This is a pretty common flaw though; most sport commentators are very similar. It's much easier to overtalk rather than to undertalk .

And yes, it was cringe/silly when he started talking about if AlphaGo might put two stones on the board on its interface to resign, lol. That's exactly the kind of irrelevant overtalk stuff I mean.