The following is from the book "The Direction of Play" by Takeo Kajiwara, p. 59

" In spite of Black's occupation of the star point with the marked stone,
White played at the marked stone. This is very bad.
Black can play 1 takamoku and if White takes
the last empty corner with 2, Black makes a high approach
at 3. White then has virtually nowhere to play that doesnt
help Black."

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]White to play.
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Kajiwara goes on to call white two a losing move and while he recognizes that this is an exaggeration, he claims that one must be prepared to think this way in order to progress at Go. Now I understand that we're in rather deep waters here so I'm not going to ask anyone to explain what's so weak about white's plays but rather I'm interested in learning more about the concept of playing moves that help your opponent or using your opponent's moves to help yourself. Now I understand a little bit of this already when it's more obvious such as when my opponent invades at 3x3 too early and I get a nice wall in return. I wonder if someone can elaborate a little better on how this works at such an early point in the game. What is it about entering the northwest corner or approaching the star point that helps black so much?

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Kajiwara was famous for making extreme statements such as this one. However he has a point in that White 2, the marked stone, allows Black to make a move that works perfectly with the 4-4 stone in the upper right and coordinates beautifully with the other black stones. The three black stones, all on the fourth line, are now perfectly situated for making a moyo game. Black has sente at the beginning and White's marked move gives Black even more sente, in a way.

Well, with the 5-4 point, if you jump into the corner, black can just press white down. This works well in both corners since it faces the 4-4 stone. Conversely, if you approach the 4-4, black can play a one space jump and take sente to make a corner enclosure, or just pincer favourably.

Just as a general thing, with a 4-4 stone black would love to get a strong position facing it in a facing corner to help use it, and in this case, he has both and can treat the sides as miai, to some degree. If black plays a 5-4 stone and white wants to limit its future development while taking a corner, white would aim to take the corner black's stone is facing, i.e. the top right for each 5-4 stone in this case. Black wouldn't expect to turn each side fully into territory, obviously, but by having high stones, black is prepared to fight favourably in the top right of the board, while white's stones do less on the bottom and left.

White's 3-4 stone, on the other hand, is being kept from developing on a large scale by black's 5-4 stone already. It can't make a corner enclosure. Viewed from the perspective of black's 4-4, it's a third line stone, and has already been capped. Should white pincer it, black's 4-4 stone will help in the coming fight, and if not, black will get a strong position facing his 4-4 stone. If white's stone were facing the other way, then black's normal approaches naturally induce white plays along the right side, making the potential of black's 4-4 stone less.

As a final consideration, suppose white does take the other 3-4 point. At that time, if you split the board into areas of white and black influence, which would be larger?

Now that that's out of the way, it's worth repeating that this is a very high level analysis and that it's hard to put into words or numbers how far behind white really is, if he is behind at all. Certainly other pros have demonstrated that they disagree with this analysis by playing in exactly this way.

I would like to chime in on skydyr's last point. I do not want to say that Kajiwara's book is wrong for obvious reasons, but I found it quite dangerous. After reading it (around your level) I was stuck with a lot of wrong intuitions about what can and "can't" be played in the opening and it cost me some heavy unlearning against strong players. I would be wary about trying to deduce "visual intuition" or general principles from positions he shows in the book, in the sense that most of his authority statements become wrong if you move even one stone. Of course that's par for the course with go, but this does not appear clearly at all in the book in my opinion. In this position Black's advantage depends heavily on the positions of his stones at the top, so very similar-looking position might be perfectly ok for White.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't recommend reading this book before dan or at least strong SDK level. Of course it is just my opinion coming from one negative experience.

I don't know if I can help you a lot with the shown position. I feel like White should approach the top right corner, but with a takamoku facing each direction, White feels a bit unconfortable about choosing a direction - if the top left stone was on the 4-4 point I would have no problem approaching from the top.

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

There is information on this topic in Robert Jasiek's book "First Fundamentals" in the chapter 'Do not help your opponent'.

Thanks! I can only imagine that Jasiek's books are very good. I'll look into it.

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]White to play.
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I suspect as black O Meien would draw a sector line like this in his head, smile, and call the upper right side a "Zone." Black can fight favorably in that area.