White tengen - a reasonable move?

lemonpie · Post by **lemonpie** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:53 am

If you played on the central point as white for your first move, would that be giving your opponent an instant advantage

EdLee · Post by **EdLee** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:08 pm

May I ask why you want to know,
and whether you have your own guesses one way or another ?

Vesa · Post by **Vesa** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:42 pm

I have a 100% winning score with a white tengen in tournaments...

Cheers,
Vesa

tentano · Post by **tentano** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 2:29 pm

100%?

People need to shape up ... something like 60% would be great already, but 100%? Seriously, it's not the perfect move. Especially in a competitive setting people should be ready to accept whatever curveballs you throw them.

DrStraw · Post by **DrStraw** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:10 pm

tentano wrote:100%?

People need to shape up ... something like 60% would be great already, but 100%? Seriously, it's not the perfect move. Especially in a competitive setting people should be ready to accept whatever curveballs you throw them.

Cannot be 60% if he has only done it once.

tentano · Post by **tentano** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:17 pm

Oh, low sample size, huh?

Vesa · Post by **Vesa** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 3:34 am

tentano wrote:Oh, low sample size, huh?

The sample is six games during 2001-2003, plus one kuskus tengen (white 2 in 9-10) game.

Cheers,
Vesa

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 6:22 am

Looks fun:

lemonpie · Post by **lemonpie** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 9:44 am

EdLee wrote:May I ask why you want to know,
and whether you have your own guesses one way or another ?

I like to fool around a bit in fooseki. Thought I'd ask the local wizards their opinion about this opening

Polama · Post by **Polama** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 10:45 am

It's an interesting way to play. White has 1 corner to 3, but he seizes the initiative to approach first. He can also tenuki his approaches more easily, since there's support above, and so get stones into a couple of blacks corners.

However, white tengen for the first move feels premature to me. Unless you're worried about black taking it, it seems every so slightly better to wait until your 2nd (or even 3rd, making an approach to a black corner for move 2) move. Make black choose his arrangement of corner stones before knowing that white is going to take tengen. I doubt it matters in practice, but that just seems more 'correct style' to me.

oren · Post by **oren** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 7:07 pm

Boidhre wrote:Looks fun:

Sometimes I think the chance to play on TV bring out the more interesting moves. There was also the 5-5, tengen, 5-5 game.

Krama · Post by **Krama** » Sun Mar 22, 2015 3:36 am

Black tengen however could be a good move.

snorri · Post by **snorri** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:10 pm

It is not worse than passing.

lemonpie · Post by **lemonpie** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:18 pm

Vesa wrote:I have a 100% winning score with a white tengen in tournaments...

Cheers,
Vesa

Same here, 3 games. The last opponent told me that he isn't going to enjoy playing a drunk person.

Mef · Post by **Mef** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 11:21 pm

snorri wrote:It is not worse than passing.

This is actually a great metric to use as a starting point.....I think we'll all agree that white playing tengen is significantly better than passing.

If we assume that komi of 6.5-7.5 is reasonable, then the value of the first couple moves in the opening is about 13-15 points. If passing loses you 13-15 points, then realistically the worst case for tengen is going to be about half that (losing you 6.5 - 7.5 points). That means that if you are playing tengen as your first move as white, you shouldn't worry any more about it than you would making a mistake in early endgame (and that is if you are an extreme pessimist, it's entirely possible that it is costing you much less than that, if anything at all).

For me personally, I would spend more time worrying about correctly timing my first line hanes in endgame (which are often double sente!) than I would about the fact that I played tengen in the opening.

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White tengen - a reasonable move?

White tengen - a reasonable move?

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