After reading this I did a quick database search of this position (without q10). The move here is the second most common after the usually cited joseki play, and occurs pretty frequently. To my surprise, white only rarely responds by pulling the stone on the top. The clear majority of the responses were either a or b here:Uberdude wrote:I thinkNumsgil wrote:
Or this, which I think isn't as easily dismissed as the others. As white I'd feel uncomfortable trying to decide how to respond (do I slide into the corner for base? Do I try to rescue the lone stone black didn't capture?)
is a strong move for black, especially given the support at q10. To play honte at a seems to me like a classic example of the dangers of "following joseki" without thinking about the actual position on the board. Even without q10 in place this descent is a powerful move, thought it does have a tinge of overplay: it will result in violent fighting. If white answers
P.S. as for what that technique is called, I've not heard a particular name but it does crop up a lot. It is an example of miai: the crude atari gives black an obvious good answer and then white is without a good move, the attachment creates 2 good moves for white, only 1 of which black can deal with.
White a was more common, even though it allows black b - white c -black d with ugly shape as a follow-up. After that things get complicated and seem to depend on the details on the rest of the board (and the sample size in my game collection is getting too small to draw any serious conclusions) but it seems like both sides are likely to leave the top alone for awhile - it is not so much an immediate threat to pull it out but aji for later.
Some of that is likely almost circular - if the threat of pulling it out was huge black wouldn't have played this way. So one shouldn't jump to too many conclusions. Still, it surprised me that professionals seem quite willing to play the white side of this sequence, and that black doesn't choose it more often.
