Lee is not being arrogant. He’s making an objective evaluation based on AlphaGo’s play against Fan Hui, which he had seen. And Fan Hui and Lee Sedol are not exactly comparable in strength. In the Go world, Lee is Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer. He is one of those rare virtuosos who defines his era, who sets the pace for the rest of the world. He is orders of magnitude more talented than Fan Hui, who is no slouch. And Fan Hui has actually beaten AlphaGo outside of the formal five-game match DeepMind publicized. With much stricter time settings, he won two out of five matches, giving AlphaGo a much harder time.

Other Korean professionals joke that they’re envious of Lee, that they feel the DeepMind Challenge Match is the easiest million dollars a top-level player could ever make.

* * *

Minutes into Game 1, all expectations change. It’s immediately clear that Lee Sedol is not playing the same AlphaGo that Fan Hui did back in London. That version of AlphaGo played steadily but also passively, peacefully. The AlphaGo playing in Seoul is happy to engage in aggressive fighting with Lee. Lee has played an unconventional opening, trying to throw AlphaGo off, but it is not working.

AlphaGo has had nearly five months to improve—and it is always improving, playing itself millions of times, incrementally revising its algorithms based on which sequences of play result in a higher win percentage. As you are reading this, AlphaGo is improving. It does not take breaks. It does not have days when it just doesn’t feel like practicing, days when it can’t kick its electronic brain into focus. Day in and day out, AlphaGo has been rocketing towards superiority, and the results are staggering.

Lee goes on to lose Game 1, resigning after 186 moves. The turning point in the mental game seems to have come at White’s move 102. It’s a sharp, unexpected invasion, an aggressive move that invites complicating fighting positions. It is, in truth, exactly the kind of move Lee is known for. In this moment, a full range of reactions washes over Lee: shock, surprise, acceptance, and finally grim resolution. His jaw drops, and after several seconds, he sits back in his chair and smiles, perhaps amused but certainly taken aback. Then his expression grows serious, and his hand rubs the back of his neck, a tic he exhibits when he’s thinking hard or feeling nervous.

The moment he throws in the towel, he begins revising moves, pushing stones around the board to play out alternate variations, experimenting with the roads untraveled. We can see him work through it, trying to pinpoint exactly how he has lost.

He has taken the machine’s measure. Going into Game 2, he understands the magnitude of what he’s up against. The following evening will be the real first test. But in the press conference following Game 1, he downgrades his perceived chances of winning to 50 percent.