Balanced Attack

[lobotommy]

You ask for theory about thing you should practice through playing games. You just don't understand that your questions are asked wrong. In this topic you just simply ask: "is there a book about theory of some sort of playing reached by practice?". In go books there is simple statement for example about "balanced attack" then a practice example and voila, next topic. There is no deep theory behind all this stuff you ask. There is just a hard work.

I mentioned philosophy because (and it's just my presuposition based on your posts) you think that go theory has some great depths. No. It hasn't. The practice of go, the game itself - has depth (in a specific meaning, I'm thinking here about process of learning, and a potential to improve somebody's skills), but not a theory itself. Theory will not solve any problems you have with your playing skills.

And yes, my degree is not PhD. Is it a problem for you? Have you any experience with european philosophy, cognitive science, philosophy of mind? Feel free to ask me prv about this stuff if you want to talk about it.

[edit: I added few words go because it was not clear about what depth I'm writing here, and it looked contradictory to my other thoughts about go, theory and practice, East vs West approach etc. ]

[SmoothOper]

There is no deep theory behind all this stuff you ask. There is just a hard work.

Have you thought about a different hobby, maybe one that makes a little better sense and doesn't suggest such a hard nosed approach to you?

[Loons]

SmoothOper, please play nice. Lobotommy's posts are worth reading and thinking about.


When you say "balanced strategy" are you saying, invade the same side twice, so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket? I would worry about starting a splitting attack against yourself, which seems to me to have happened in your given diagram.

[SmoothOper]

SmoothOper, please play nice. Lobotommy's posts are worth reading and thinking about.


When you say "balanced strategy" are you saying, invade the same side twice, so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket? I would worry about starting a splitting attack against yourself, which seems to me to have happened in your given diagram.

I meant "Balanced Attack" specifically, but the idea is to do anything to avoid being that weak group that gets picked on.

I tried it in a game the other night. It seemed to work pretty well, at my level I don't think my opponent knew what hit him, though my plan didn't go exactly as expected. he made the two point extension instead of the low kick, so to keep with my plan, I chose the high shoulder hit. In retrospect that was pretty bad, even though I ended up killing his two heavy stones. In the future I will consider just moving out with the one point jump, which will be just as effective as a leaning attack on blacks two point extension.

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As for lobotomomy, I feel his thoughts are simply incoherent "noodling", trying to get me to give him concrete advice, since he has since revised his argument to include positional judgement from mere reading and tactics, and I feel if that is what he is doing he ought to be a little more respectful, so as not to give us "trolls" a bad name.

[tapir]

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Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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concrete advice

The position on the right side features two eyeless white groups struggling against two strong black groups and a somewhat weak black group which is still stronger than each of the white groups and already has a base. In other words, White is under attack and tries to settle / sacrifice skillfully here, while Black is attacking.

If you would start asking questions and listen to the answers instead of asking a question only as introduction to your lecture, this might benefit you. Showmanship works tremendously well almost everywhere in our modern world, but in Go it never will earn you respect. Nobody starts as a master and every go player in the world is aware of that and most will show respect to someone eager to learn. If you are only interested in teaching, you better get strong before you start.

[SmoothOper]

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Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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concrete advice

The position on the right side features two eyeless white groups struggling against two strong black groups and a somewhat weak black group which is still stronger than each of the white groups and already has a base. In other words, White is under attack and tries to settle / sacrifice skillfully here, while Black is attacking.

Shinogi and sabaki does seem to be what it is.

If you would start asking questions and listen to the answers instead of asking a question only as introduction to your lecture, this might benefit you. Showmanship works tremendously well almost everywhere in our modern world, but in Go it never will earn you respect. Nobody starts as a master and every go player in the world is aware of that and most will show respect to someone eager to learn. If you are only interested in teaching, you better get strong before you start.

I appreciate your advice. My experience is when asking questions on a forum, it is important to demonstrate some attempt to solve the problem oneself and or whatever progress one has made, at which point people are more willing to engage, often times in an attempt to settle a similar problem, and that in many cases solutions are likely to come from those who are not necessarily the experts.

[lemmata]

A specific example follows. It suggests a good way to play against the Chinese Fuseki...I call the following a balanced attack because its success depends on multiple groups that aren't all that strong...

This post is quite confusing because the italicized part suggests that "balanced attack" is a characteristic of white's play in your diagram. However, black is the only player who is in a position to mount a reasonable attack. Little details like this make it difficult for people to respond.

My guess is that what you mean by "attack" is not the same as what most people mean when they talk about attacking in go. It seems to me that you are using the word attack as a synonym for "plan", which is a much broader idea. You may want to take more time to organize your own thoughts in the shared go lexicon so that communication flows more smoothly.

Like others in this thread, I think that particular way of playing against the Chinese opening is very questionable on an empty board. Furthermore, even in the pro game with that position that was mentioned, it seemed to be a way of giving a lot of territory to black in exchange for a lot of center influence. That hardly seems like a territorially balanced way to play. One has to wonder if black being Cho Chikun had something to do with this outcome, but white also used some aji from surrounding stones that were not in your diagram. Those extra stones were important to how white made shape with the stones near black's 3-4. What you keep calling sabaki doesn't happen without the implied threats generated by the extra stones.

[SmoothOper]

Those extra stones were important to how white made shape with the stones near black's 3-4. What you keep calling sabaki doesn't happen without the implied threats generated by the extra stones.

This formation seems like a worth while study because white can get that formation just about any time they want. It hasn't occured to me before, but perhaps there is something to the timing in the execution. I guess white doesn't need to rush to invade, because the Chinese Fuseki isn't set up to make use of an enclosure. IE stones at a, b or c don't really help. A stones at a or b is to cramped with the extension, and c still has an invasion under the hoshi. So I conclude white can wait.

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[lemmata]

This formation seems like a worth while study because white can get that formation just about any time they want.

I think that you completely misunderstood me. I am not talking about the formation that you diagrammed. I am talking about the follow-up moves in the Cho Chikun-O Rissei game record that make shape for those stones after the moves in your diagram. If those follow up moves don't work, then the formation in the diagram you made is pretty bad.

EDIT: On second thought, if you understand that this is not the right time to make that sort of formation, maybe you did understand what everyone was saying.

[SmoothOper]

I guess the follow up, is for the long extension from the 34 corner in other formations such as the mini-Chinese, is it necessary to invade immediately?

[hyperpape]

No, it's not necessary to invade immediately. Two common responses to the low chinese:

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In fact, my sense is that approaching Black's 3-4 point from the "normal" side is considered unwise, though it can be played by us kyu players.

[lemmata]

No, it's not necessary to invade immediately. Two common responses to the low chinese...

I personally like your two choices because there are so many pro games to use for studying those. Here's another interesting one: White 1 or a, to prevent the Chinese opening. Approaching a 3-4 instead of taking an empty corner happens a lot in classical games.

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[SmoothOper]

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In fact, my sense is that approaching Black's 3-4 point from the "normal" side is considered unwise, though it can be played by us kyu players.

If white chooses to build their own moyo or enclosure, then it becomes a question of when will black decide to play the red triangle, I guess that is why it is important for white to occupy the upper side so that black doesn't get a stone in around a

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[tchan001]

You ask for theory about thing you should practice through playing games. You just don't understand that your questions are asked wrong. In this topic you just simply ask: "is there a book about theory of some sort of playing reached by practice?". In go books there is simple statement for example about "balanced attack" then a practice example and voila, next topic. There is no deep theory behind all this stuff you ask. There is just a hard work.

I mentioned philosophy because (and it's just my presuposition based on your posts) you think that go theory has some great depths. No. It hasn't. The practice of go, the game itself - has depth, but not a theory itself. Theory will not solve any problems you have with your playing skills.

And yes, my degree is not PhD. Is it a problem for you? Have you any experience with european philosophy, cognitive science, philosophy of mind? Feel free to ask me prv about this stuff if you want to talk about it.

I’d like to quote HH from another thread. viewtopic.php?p=124258#p124258

Also for go there are certainly areas where principles and theory have high value, but playing strength isn't really one of them, IMO.

I think, to make a comparison, that playing go is not that different from, say, playing basketball. You could read all the books in the world on basketball theory, but if you then try to play it against a player who has been shooting hoops on the street all his life, you will quickly realise the value of practice over theory.

[Bill Spight]

I would like to quote myself from another thread.

That's all.

Happy New Year!