Foundation of Basic Skills Part 1

For the past few days, I have been agonizing over what to write for my blog. I felt I have written too much about technical stuff and failed to address more basic skills that can reach and benefit greater number of go players.


基本图

In games we often encounter situations where we have tough time deciding how to play because we can't read clearly from all the options we have. We can't read clearly mostly because the board is too vast or empty that we don't have enough information to help guide our decision making process. For example in 基本图, white has many options A-E to choose from. Without more information from the surrounding, it will be very tough for white to decide.

With clear picture from the surrounding, the decision between A and B is quite easy to make for black. From a rough analysis, if black presses from A to build thickness then black probabily tries to use it to build moyo in the left side. But the solid white corner effectively constrains black's moyo development.

Upon a closer read, 白6 will not follow the norm of jump out at A because the upper side is too narrow (therefore value is quite low) instead white will crawl at 白6 to gain sente then reduce black's thickness from 白8.

黑1 tight pincer is a logical move. Black tries to extend to the farthest to maximize black's thickness.

Sometimes face with vast empty board like above, decision becomes very murky and very difficult to pinpoint. In this case, we need to "probe" for more information.

白1 is the "probe" move. White is soliciting more information from black to make the picture clearer so white can make better decision at the lower corner. Black's response at either A or B will alter white's response at lower corner.

Question 1:

If black defends with 黑2 then how would white play at the lower corner?

Basic Assumptions of Joseki

Joseki has two critical assumptions:
1) Seed strength of black and white is about evenly matched.
2) Territory (地) & influence (厚势) for black and white is closely balanced.

One of the most common mistakes for dan players is to copy joseki verbatim for all types of situations. Understand that weiqi is "alive" and dynamic, our strategies need to be flexible and adapt to the surroundings of the game. Often we will encounter situations where one or both of the above assumptions is/are violated. In that case we need to carefully analyze the game to gauge seed strength and understand the balance of 地 vs 厚势.