In 1997 futurists figured it would take a century for machines to beat a human at Go

Deep Blue's recent trouncing of Garry Kasparov sent shock waves through the Western world. In much of the Orient, however, the news that a computer had beaten a chess champion was likely to have been met with a yawn. While there are avid chess players in Japan, China, Korea and throughout the East, far more popular is the deceptively simple game of Go, in which black and white pieces called stones are used to form intricate, interlocking patterns that sprawl across the board.

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