Life In 19x19

Bill Spight wrote:

atarihuana wrote:

Joaz Banbeck wrote:The two things that bother me about it are:
1) Black can tenuki easily. ( It is a symmetrical position. If white does not mind black having sente here, then black can't mind white having sente either, so it costs him very little to tenuki )

what? no. yes it is symetrical, but it also is a "contact" play. do not tenuki, the area is "hot"

Probably not. In theory, non-random plays close to other stones usually reduce the temperature. We may have the feeling that they raise it, but today's top bots do not make that assumption.

I'm with atarihuana here.

What about the normal approaches? Eg. Knights move:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ --------------------+
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . 1 . . . . |
$$ , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . , . . . |[/go]

This kind of approach is very tenuki-able. If black ignores White's approach then it's just as if white played an unpopular opening move (5-3) and black played a very reasonable approach.
White gets a result as if she played the first move in the corner, but that move has to be the unpopular 5-3 move and it seems a little less likely that the 5-3 stone was played with good direction because white may have expected a response.

With the armpit hit whoever plays there next gets a result as if they played the first 3-4 stone in that corner.

When we approach a corner I think we usually accept that if the other player
-played first in the corner
-takes gote
Then we expect that they will have the noticeably better position. We just hope that we will have a reasonably good position considering these factors.