Life In 19x19

I often have game reviews/teaching games where the reviewer will suggest a move that seems to me to be completely absent of any threat to the opponent, but they describe it as an attack. (Like, for instance, a knights move that actually leans away from the enemy's stones.) Or will describe moves I make as aggressive, when all I was trying to do is defend territory.

I don't seem to really understand what an attack is unless it directly breaks into or threatens enemy territory, like an invasion, peep, or spike, or threatens to cut/capture. Can anyone give some short hints on the nature of attacking?

Attacking is the act of creating a weakness in your opponents groups. There are several ways of doing this, depending on the situation. Several examples include seperating your opponents stones, invading an opponents area, reducing, or even making your own groups stronger. It's pretty hard to specifically point out what they're talking about without seeing any of the positions.

I think the best way to learn is by seeing how stronger players attack. Often in handicap games I won't realize that stones are under threat until it's too late.

For some nice examples of attacking, our own Magicwand and Violence played an entertaining and instructive best-of-three:

http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... f=37&t=732
http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... f=37&t=819
http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... f=37&t=932

I feel like these threads should be on a "best of L19" somewhere. Read through and see if you can follow the comments!

Tangentially, I think you will get better help if you post a specific position or game.

The cheeky answer is all those horrible things your opponent does that cause your groups to die. This isn't as silly an answer as it first looks.

More seriously, attacking is all about creating situations where your opponent's group is weaker than your surrounding groups, and if he just ignores your moves, the opponent's groups die. That is why a knight's move in the opposite direction to your group might be called an attack. It is strengthening the opponent's group on that side, possibly making it immune from attack. If your opponent then manages to get something on the other side of your group that is also safe from dying immediately, he has an attack. At this point he doesn't need to find moves to kill your group. Just surrounding you is good. You might live in gote, giving him a free move elsewhere, and nice walls to use attacking your other groups. You might run out to the centre, but he chases you getting free moves in sente. If your opponent chooses wisely, those free moves may build a wall opposite a strong position of his with a nice big chasm in between. A moyo created while you were running away. That would be good result from attack, even though you got away to safety in the centre. Then perhaps he caps the stone you put in the chasm of his moyo.

A simpler way of saying it is to just look for threatening moves against the weakest of your opponent's groups, balance that against the fact that your opponent will immediately try to damage one of the groups surrounding his weak group. That is why checking your surrounding groups are both stronger than the opposing weak group you wish to mess with is important, and thus a move strengthening your vulnerability is often the right move.

Its normal not to have a clue what attacking is. That's what handicap games were invented for. If you get 9 stones handicap, you can practically attack with every move for the first 50 moves. Almost all the time when you look at a white stone and the black stones on either side in a 9 stone handicap game, the evaluation is that the white stone is weaker than black stones on either side, so find a dual purpose move that keeps the white stone from getting 2 eyes, and also gives you something else, e.g. a wall, sealing him in, or your group safety (only as preparation to attack elsewhere.)

Inkwolf wrote:I often have game reviews/teaching games where the reviewer will suggest a move that seems to me to be completely absent of any threat to the opponent, but they describe it as an attack. (Like, for instance, a knights move that actually leans away from the enemy's stones.) Or will describe moves I make as aggressive, when all I was trying to do is defend territory.

I don't seem to really understand what an attack is unless it directly breaks into or threatens enemy territory, like an invasion, peep, or spike, or threatens to cut/capture. Can anyone give some short hints on the nature of attacking?

Why don't you post a game review where you were trying to attack?

An invasion isn't an attack. In an invasion, you try to make a living group in an area where your opponent has a great deal of control over the board (and thus, where he can potentially make lots of territory). It is your invasion that comes under attack from the opponent, in this case.

A peep, and other sorts of forcing moves, also isn't necessarily an attack (although if the opponent ignores your threat, you can probably then attack that group with impunity). Your peeping stone strengthens you, but a firm connection strengthens him just as much, or more. This is also true of contact moves; when you play a stone next to his stone, he'll add a stone, and then you'll add a stone too, and when the dust settles (unless someone made a mistake) you will both be strong locally. Naturally, when you are attacking a group you don't want to make it stronger! The weaker the group, the more profitable your attack will be. Ideally when there is a weak group you want to attack, you play forcing moves and threats against a different group, and use those stones to strengthen your attack on a different part of the board.

(As with anything in go, there are exceptions. You might play an "invasion" inside a group you want to attack, if you are sure that either you can pull out the stones, or use them to reduce the eyespace. In that case we call it a "placement." Likewise, you might start playing peeps and forcing moves against a weak group when you've read out a good result (a kill, or sealing the group).)

Likewise with defending territory. Defending secure territory is usually something that happens at the end of the game. At the beginning and in the middle, there isn't too much secure territory to defend. If your opponent plays locally in an area where you have some control but no territory, and then you play as though you think you can claim everything, you're playing too aggressively.

I don't seem to really understand what an attack is unless it directly breaks into or threatens enemy territory, like an invasion, peep, or spike, or threatens to cut/capture. Can anyone give some short hints on the nature of attacking?

You are not alone in this. In fact not understanding this part of the game is a marker for middle kyus and below. You know the way toddlers learn to talk - although some start earlier than others, they all go through the same stages and so you can guess their ages fairly well from just the way they talk. Pros have similar markers for gauging the strength and progress of their pupils.

Since you gave a cluster of words to convey your idea of attacking, I'll suggest a similar way of looking at it but with some significant differences (for example, like jts I disagree with counting invasion as an attack). I don't know your teachers' backgrounds, but I'll assume that, like most western players, they are influenced in some way by the Japanese notion of attacking.

The Japanese for 'to attack' is semeru. There are related words: semai means narrow/confined, semaru means to apply pressure to, and other meanings of semeru (usually written with different characters) include urging someone or torturing someone. In short, there is a feeling of putting pressure on the opponent and keeping that pressure applied by confining him. Crowding him, if you like. Many beginners and even stronger kyu players overlook this and often attack by chasing the enemy out into the open. It may be fun and it may make the opponent respond, but chasing is not semeru - and semeru is better because you keep the pressure on.

So, rather than think about punching, jabbing, poking, kicking or chasing the opponent, think about crowding him. Visualise it perhaps as trying to put a sack over his head. As you will have inferred already, this way of looking at it means you don't always have to be at very close quarters. Go, after all, is the surrounding game.

More specifically, at least when pros use understanding of attacking as a grade marker, it means understanding that the object is not necessarily to capture the opponent. It is sufficient to get some benefit (which may be fairly tenuous, such as getting more thickness).

A Japanese example of semeru is Black 1 below. It aims e.g. at cutting at 'a'.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . X , X . . . . , . . O X X , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . 1 . a O O O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

You will see from this example that semeru refers to aiming at an existing weakness. It is not about creating that weakness. Obviously it's good to create weaknesses in the enemy formation, and if you need a word to describe that process you can use 'attack' if it suits you, but it's not normally what is meant by semeru (in Japanese semaru might be used to describe the former process, so there is clearly some kind of relationship, but...).

To make the leap out of the middle or lower kyu bracket you need to learn to appreciate that the effect of Black 1 is not to kill White. The main effect is to get Black 1 as a free move, and with it all the benefits it may bring in future on the left side of the board. What you also need to appreciate is that it is confining White. Assuming White protects the cutting point at 'a', at some point Black can then harrass the White group further by playing a knight's move on the right side. This is still attacking of the semeru type, but when it gets this close up and nasty it's more often called bullying ijime. Either way, Black is still not expecting to kill the White group. He is just picking up free points.

Now consider starting operations against the White group with that knight's move on the right side (i.e. omitting Black 1). This is not really a semeru attack because it is not confining White. White will certainly respond (somewhere around 1) because he will no doubt feel assailed and threatened, but he is simply being chased out into the left side which is where Black should be hoping to make profit (because he has invested two unopposed stones there).

So, whatever cluster of words or ideas you choose to associate with attacking in go, you should include the ideas of confining, surrounding and pressure as high priority items, and if you do retain 'chase' in your thesaurus, I'd recommend marking it with an asterisk.

Barrauss wrote:Attacking is the act of creating a weakness in your opponents groups.

No.

John Fairbairn wrote:You will see from this example that semeru refers to aiming at an existing weakness. It is not about creating that weakness.

Yes.

Some interesting long answers, so I'll err on the side of brevity.

Moves are exchanges.
Attacks are an exchange of:
Safety for profit.

Thanks! As usual, you have all given me lots of good ideas to consider.

jts wrote:If your opponent plays locally in an area where you have some control but no territory, and then you play as though you think you can claim everything, you're playing too aggressively.

Aha! I resemble that remark.

Emeraldemon, thanks for the links! The first game was exciting, I look forward to looking at the others.

Loons wrote:Some interesting long answers, so I'll err on the side of brevity.

Moves are exchanges.
Attacks are an exchange of:
Safety for profit.

Not quite.

Attacks are taking profit from the lack of safety of opponent groups, but *without* giving safety in return

Imho, John already said it best:

John Fairbairn wrote:Many beginners and even stronger kyu players overlook this and often attack by chasing the enemy out into the open. It may be fun and it may make the opponent respond, but chasing is not semeru - and semeru is better because you keep the pressure on.

If you really want to look at an attack as exchange, it's the exchange of "profit" for "I'm not killing you". Or, more generally, "profit" for "otherwise I'll attack much more severely", because not every attack threatens to kill immediately.

But I find it more useful to look at attacks as just free profit, in exchange for nothing. You can just take what is already yours. If you have to give something in exchange for it, you were ripped off (or, alternatively, the opposing group was not as weak as you thought it was ).

As "Get Strong at Haiku" goes, I think Loons is perfectly correct. Unless someone has goofed or the group is dead, at the end of an attack the weak group will be stronger than it was at the beginning of the attack. If the defending group is weaker after the attack, either it would have been profitable to continue the attack or it wasn't profitable to start the attack.

Sure, at the end of the game, the attacked group will most likely be alive with two definite eyes

My point is: The primary goal is to attack while leaving the attacked group weak for as long as possible. Usually you stop attacking right *before* the group gets significantly stronger, not after.

I started a new thread to talk about balance and attacking here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4829 - because I didn't want to derail this practical thread by talking about abstract ideas.

Somewhat more practically; attacking well in Go has always reminded me of a great quote from one of Australia's most rhetorically gifted Prime Ministers, Paul Keating. He's one of those people who has a collection of famous and witty quotes to his name.

When asked by the leader of the opposition (John Hewson) why he wouldn't call an early election, he responded "because, mate, I want to do you slowly". I don't know how much that helps other people with Go, but it's at least good for a laugh.

Here's a video of him from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_CHXDBq9Ps - The quote I mentioned is about 3 mins in.