Thunkd wrote:jts wrote:This is why we say "sente gains nothing". You expect both sides to get all their sente moves. You can only get ahead by playing gote moves, or taking the other guy's sente moves away from him. A sente move is like a check in your wallet.
This is a difficult concept for me. Looking at the example I think maybe I see why I'm not getting it. The example you posted is a type of situation that I rarely encounter (or at least notice) where one player has a sente move and the other player has no incentive to play in the area other than preventing that sente move. Usually when I'm dealing with sente moves both players have a move which would be sente in the area. So it's a situation where if you play elsewhere your opponent will likely play here first taking their sente move.
Well, a gote move is worth playing when it gains at least twice as much as your biggest sente move on the board, generally speaking. That means that if you have a sente move that's a lot less valuable than the biggest move on the board, even if it's sente, your opponent shouldn't take gote to prevent that small value, they should take the biggest move. Assuming your level is 9k or so as your profile suggests, you are probably at the point where you will see people still play those small gote moves, and you can punish them by taking the big move they ignored for that small move. This means that you can hold off on those sente edge plays until they're near the value of whatever big middle game fight is going on, which means that the middle game is likely mostly done. Then, assuming your opponent played correctly, the sente move is still there for you to make, and it was in reserve as a ko threat before.
Because of this, that sente move can be played at anytime up to a certain point in the game, and that means you can count it as yours. It's only when your opponent takes gote to prevent it that you don't get the points. This means that the opponent's gote move gained them points, whereas your sente move was playing out something you already had.
When there are double-sente moves, moves that are sente for both sides, those are immediately big and should be played fairly early. How big they are is really a function of the threats they make, so as soon as bigger threats have died down, you should play them immediately. That said, you also need to ensure that you aren't confusing a
gote move that has a sente followup with a sente move and immediately defending, because the followup is only the value of the gain in sente.
Hopefully this makes more sense?
, and it will still be your sente at :b251: . If your opponent plays it while there are 6pt gote still on the board... great! He just lost 2 points. If your opponent plays it while there are 2 pt gote left... whatever! Your opponent didn't net any points, and he might even have lost one.
) When he has a gote follow-up, you assume that it's a coin-flip who will get it, and count half of the value of the followup as part of his first move.