Go Match Between Lee Sedol, Google's AlphaGo Enters Second Day

The duel between South Korean Go master Lee Sedol and Google's computer program AlphaGo entered its second day on Thursday in the South Korean capital Seoul.

The second match in the five-game series is vital to Lee, as he was defeated by AlphaGo during Wednesday's game, becoming the first top Go professional to lose to a computer in an even game.

The battle between man and machine has attracted much attention in the media as well as from Go players and enthusiasts around the world.

Lee's wife and daughter visited the match venue on Thursday to show their support for Lee.

The five-game series will conclude on March 15.

AlphaGo took the world by surprise earlier this year when it was announced that it had defeated European Go champion Fan Hui 5-0 in a series played last October.

Some experts had predicted that it would be decades before a computer could defeat humans at Go because of the vast number of possible moves.

Go, which originated in China more than 2,500 years ago, has been viewed as a grand challenge for AI because of its complexity and intuitive nature. In Go, two players take turns to place black and white stones on intersections of a 19 by 19 board. The player who surrounds the most territory wins. A player can capture an opponent's stone by surrounding it on all four sides.