In that case, the pro will play a very aggressive opening because he knows he has to catch up 150 points. If the pro plays a "normal" opening, he will gain fewer points at the opening, maybe 15? That's twice komi, so that's like one stone of strength difference. Is it negligible or not? It depends how far you are from your maximum level.

I think talking about "beating up on" sent the wrong message. What I had in mind was mainly a question of judgement. Some years ago, while the top bots played at amateur dan level, Yoda Norimoto gave 4 stones to one of them. Despite the 4 stone handicap, Yoda built up a large moyo. The bot, as I recall, managed to reduce the moyo enough to win the game. But suppose that Yoda had pursued a large moyo strategy in an even game. Without the aid of the handicap stones how would the bot have fared? There are many possible ways to deal with it, and the bot would have been on unfamiliar territory. If you look at historical pro games going back to at least Dosaku, you see pros dealing with large, thin moyos in various ways, not always successfully. Even today, bots find many pro errors in dealing with moyos, thin or not. How much more difficult would they be for SDKs? And it is not just SDKs who may have such difficulty. Once, in a tournament, as a 4 dan playing even against a 2 dan, I won by some 70 pts.! I wasn't trying to bamboozle my opponent, I was just playing go. But in the opening I built up a large central moyo. At some point, probably around move 50, he played an incursion, I sacrificed a few stones to build a solid wall, and that was that. Now maybe he had a better play, like invading somewhere around tengen. Then I might have won by only 40 pts. The thing is, he played a bad opening, misjudging my outside strength.

Here is a question that most experienced players have faced. You have a two space extension on the side, with opposing stones on either side, and you play a one space jump into the center. A bit later your opponent peeps at the jump from the inside. Do you connect the jump, or do you protect on the third line? A mistake could cost more than a couple of points. What do you do?

A mistake that we see at all levels of play is misjudging sente and gote. An extreme form is what I call followitis, responding to almost all of the opponent's plays. Followitis is a quick way to lose many points. OTOH, if the opponent is much stronger, not responding to their plays may be a quick way to disaster. Anyway, in the opening if a player plays gote, gaining 5 pts. instead of taking sente and playing elsewhere to gain 15 pts. that is a loss of 10 pts. in only one play. That doesn't happen that often, but losses of around 5 pts. in one play instead of 10 pts. are not uncommon at the SDK level.

Average players do not just lack the knowledge of good plays, the actually prefer bad plays in many instances. To reach dan level most people have to unlearn their bad plays. To paraphrase the great bridge writer, Victor Mollo, faced with a 50-50 choice, average players will make the wrong choice 75% of the time. That's a joke, OC, but it illustrates Mollo's point that average players have poor judgement. In Mollo's opinion, which I share, amateurs would benefit greatly from improving their judgement. In the case of go, you can't have good judgement if your openings are bad. Sakata tells about his teacher, Masubuchi, coming by their home -- Sakata's family was poor, so he lived at home -- and setting up a whole board problem and asking him where he would play. He would make the play and she would pat him on the head. At the age of 6 Sakata had developed good whole board judgement. Sakata was known for his reading ability, but he pointed out that reading is not just a question of the calculation of variations but of the application of judgement, both in judging the result of reading, but also in the choice of candidate plays.

Given their poor judgement, 2-3 kyus will typically lose 20+ pts. to par by move 30, IMO, when left to their own devices. How do you get them to give up more points? One way is to give them more choices to make. The more choices they make, the more mistakes they are likely to make. Yoda's large moyo strategy is one way to give them more choices. (Dosaku also used that strategy in handicap games.) Aggressive play is another.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Are you more or less saying that a good opening that gives a 20+ point lead gives a bigger advantage than 2 handicap stones on an empty board, because the position which is created is more difficult for the opponent? You may be right. It would be interesting to test: a 2-kyu plays against a pro during the first 30 moves, then the pro is replaced by a 4-kyu, and see who wins the game.



That's a question I've indeed faced many times. I generally connect the jump, but I don't have a clear view of possible followups so don't understand the position well, despite its apparent simplicity.

My kyu-understanding is that you connect when either the center is important or you can connect your stones and/or live easily with those stones. Because often after the peep your opponent can play a 2nd-line-placement and you end up baseless.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

What I'm trying to say is that a vastly superior player can exploit the lack of judgement of the inferior player in the opening. That is different from inducing reading errors. I do expect that a middling pro could induce most 2 kyus to lose around 30 pts. in the opening. That's worth around 2 handicap stones. It would be interesting to have a high level SDK or two play KataGo even and see how quickly KataGo reaches a 99% winrate, and how the kyu player does in the opening. I guess KataGo will not use psychology, though.



That's about where I was as a 3 dan.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I have no problem believing that a pro can pull 30 points ahead of a 2k in 30-50 moves. But my issue here is more: as a 2k aiming to lift your play to dan level, what's the better use of your time? Try to raise your opening to pro level, or try to improve your middlegame fighting skills by two or three ranks?

As Bill suggests though, it may not be as simple as that. Bad opening play can be a symptom of poor judgement, which will also affect your middlegame. (And joseki mistakes could also stem from a lack of reading, or bad shape.) So you could work on your opening and find that your middlegame play improves as a side effect.

And sometimes you might decide that studying the opening (or having long rambling discussions on online fora) is just more fun that going back to the tesuji problem book! No problem if fun rates above rank improvement, at least if you're not a pro.

Well, everybody is different. There are many roads up the mountain. In my case, improving my tactical skills lifted me from 2 kyu to shodan. Emotional maturation, I think, took me to 2 dan. And then a mixture of skills took me further. But in my case I already had a dan level opening as a 5 kyu, while my tactics were so bad that I could not fill the dame correctly.



My recommendation in general is to study everything.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

And this, in a nutshell is my problem! As well as go, I'm trying to study music, literature, mathematics, poetry, computing and more. If I try to study all of everything it's not going to work.