Fedya wrote:I find it difficult to see upcoming ataris until most of the stones are actually on the board. That's clearly a recurring theme.
Join the club!
That's why I said, a while back,
Count the dame.
White starts with 5 dame. You saw the sequence on the left where the throw-in costs 1 dame and the atari of the Black stones costs another. That leaves 3 dame. If you can remove 2 dame from the top with sente, that leaves White only 1 dame with Black to play. Bingo!
It is all very fine to say, well I should be able to visualize the board after the sequence and see the self atari, but, as Krogius pointed out about the visualized image (in
The psychology of chess), it is not as clear as what you actually see. Counting and keeping track of the number of dame is an aid not to be sneezed at.
I was wondering if people had other ideas.
) with White being unable to play 
delightfully surprising. The other reason is that it's yet another example of one of the big problems I have with my reading, which is that I find it difficult to see upcoming ataris until most of the stones are actually on the board. That's clearly a recurring theme.
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exchange takes away one dame from each side, and that 
does, too. That leaves White with only 3 dame.