Are big and urgent effectively the same thing?

[Bill Spight]

Anyway, big in the proverb does not refer to the size of play, but to the type of play. (Technically, it refers to a region of the board where you make a play.) Big plays sketch out large positions or prevent the opponent from doing so. Their primary point is influence, that is, their effect upon empty points. Urgent plays are fighting plays. Their primary point is their effect upon stones.

Would you describe a move that is territorially big (perhaps on the 3rd line, approaching an enemy group) and tactically urgent (destabilises the enemy group) as both "big" and "urgent" not because of it being _really_ big, but because it has both of the above properties separately? Does the fact it's urgent (and therefore the sort of move you're both desperate to play) increase it's "bigness" to you?

As I was writing my post I considered the approach to a corner. Is it big or urgent? My own sense is that there is a fuzziness to the classification, but I would consider an approach more urgent than big. At the same time, I doubt if the proverb really applies, or if it does, that the approach would be considered big by comparison. I do not know what pro opinion is on that question.

OTOH, if the approach is combined with, say, a 4-4 stone in the adjacent corner, to my mind its "bigness" increases, and it is also a very good play. More generally, dual purpose plays are good.

[Solomon]

Urgent moves affect the flow of the game; if you ignore an urgent move on the board to play a big move and then I play the urgent move, the rhythm or the dynamic shifts to my favor. Big moves just give you $ and because it doesn't affect the flow of the game, is usually gote as well. The hard part for me is explaining what this 'flow' or 'rhythm' is...but I hope some people get the jist of what I mean.

[moonrabbit]

I think about it like this. An example of an "urgent" move is one that preserves a connection, makes eyeshape for an otherwise weak group, or preserves access to the center, etc. If I omit the "urgent" move, I can expect to wind up with a weak group that will get chased for 10, 15, 20 points loss in sente. So the question is whether there are any "big" territorial moves on the board worth spending sente on that are worth the loss from not playing the "urgent" move. If there aren't, then the "urgent" move is the biggest move on the board, even if it doesn't look like it's making any points.

So I basically agree with EdLee. Big is big, but urgent is bigger.

Except when it's not. Sometimes a move that looks "urgent" in the sense that it stabilizes weak stones isn't actually as important as it seems. Go Seigen was (and is) a master of dangling weak groups as bait, daring his opponent to spend gote moves capturing them while he plays elsewhere.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Urgent is bigger.

Urgent is bigger later. Big is big now.

[moonrabbit]

Urgent is bigger.

Urgent is bigger later. Big is big now.

Maybe not this move, maybe not the next move, but soon, and for the rest of the game.

[Bill Spight]

Professional opinion:

In Kono Te, Nanmoku (How Large is this Play?), Ishida Yoshio shows this diagram.

$$B Big play
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Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Big play
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$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

While pros do play the approach to the bottom left corner, as well as , Ishida says that is a top class big play (Ohba).

OC, it aims to invade on the right side, but he still calls it big rather than urgent.

[snorri]

Are big moves and urgent moves effectively the same thing? There's a proverb "urgent before big", which refers often to ongoing fights or board areas where the temperature is very high before cash claiming moves. This rather implies a separate categorisation of big moves and urgent moves. There's also the argument that if something is urgent, by its very nature it has a large impact on the final points value of the game, and could therefore be seen to be "very big" as well - in that case, you could argue that the bigger it is, the more urgent it is, and the more urgent it is, the bigger it is, and therefore they equate to the same thing after analysis.

Discuss

The way people use the proverb, I get the impression that urgent usually refers to sente or reverse sente moves, whereas big usually refers to gote moves. To say that urgent moves and big moves are the same is like saying sente and gote are the same, which is a deep, global perspective.

More seriously, I think that urgent is used when the 2nd best move (or area to to move) is significantly worse than the best move (or area to move), so that the loss if you miss it is significant to the game result. If you have an even number of moves all over the board that are all very close to the same size as far as you can judge, it is hard to say one is urgent. This is one reason it is harder to find urgent moves than big moves---to know where the urgent move is, you have to know where all the big moves, are, too

[Oroth]

Urgent moves affect the flow of the game; if you ignore an urgent move on the board to play a big move and then I play the urgent move, the rhythm or the dynamic shifts to my favor. Big moves just give you $ and because it doesn't affect the flow of the game, is usually gote as well. The hard part for me is explaining what this 'flow' or 'rhythm' is...but I hope some people get the jist of what I mean.

I like this explanation. I wonder, can flow or rhythm be thought about as the way the status of groups evolve over the course of the game? An urgent move being one that not only affects the current status of one group or more, but because of the relationships between groups, determines how those groups will evolve for many moves to come.

[RobertJasiek]

I think the key distinction is that an urgent move affects the stability of groups, whereas a big move simply stakes a claim in an open area of the board.

You get the basic idea right; it agrees to my book definition of urgent: "A move is urgent if it greatly contributes to making a group more stable." Stable is defined here:
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/Joseki_2_Sample.pdf
Citing p. 99 for the implied cases when moves can be urgent,
"
- An important group's status changes from unsettled to alive.
- A local sente move at a boundary is played or prevented.
- A major cutting point of a live group is eliminated.
- A player's additional major development direction is taken or prevented.
"

Such an urgent move tends to be bigger than a "big move" of a kind like an extension from a corner enclosure because the local per move value tends to be greater; turning the side extension moyo into territory requires a few moves rather than just the one extension move. Contrarily, an urgent move achieves its aim typically immediately, like a proper move does.

Urgent is bigger later. Big is big now.

Wrong. Rather urgent is now bigger (as a per move value) than a typical big move is big now.

Ishida says that :b1: is a top class big play (Ohba).

OC, it aims to invade on the right side, but he still calls it big rather than urgent.

Ishida was right in the context of my definition above.

[Vultur]

I always thought urgent had a defensive feel. Where as big is more offensive - a territory grab.

So, if you need to do something defensive, do it. If you don't have a need to support an existing group, go for the largest expansion you can.

Urgent before big.

[Dusk Eagle]

While urgent plays are big in a sense, big plays are not necessarily urgent. I think Araban said it best:

Urgent moves affect the flow of the game; if you ignore an urgent move on the board to play a big move and then I play the urgent move, the rhythm or the dynamic shifts to my favor. Big moves just give you $ and because it doesn't affect the flow of the game, is usually gote as well. The hard part for me is explaining what this 'flow' or 'rhythm' is...but I hope some people get the jist of what I mean.

[EdLee]

Urgent is bigger later. Big is big now.

No, urgent is bigger than big right now. Big is merely big now, but still smaller than urgent. See Araban's post.
All these relative terms are for moves right now; anything that is urgent/big later is by definition not urgent/big now.

[hyperpape]

Ed, I think Joaz may have meant something different than what you thought he did. I think his point is that while a big move shows its value immediately, by sketching out potential territory, you may not see the consequences of omitting an urgent move until several moves later, when your weak group is being harassed.

It has its value right now, because you play it right now, and that's how we define the value of a move, but the consequences that make its value explicit and readily apparent come later.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Thanks, Hyperpape

Perhaps I should have said "big is countable now, urgent is countable later."

[RobertJasiek]

The hard part for me is explaining what this 'flow' or 'rhythm' is...

Then don't use words you can't explain to yourself! Speak about stability instead.