Whiteboard Sunday – First Joseki #4
Source:ralphunden
Hi everyone, we’re in the 4th edition of Whiteboard Sunday. Last month I started this new column on Haengma — but I don’t want to publish only short lectures on how to play baduk. I want to publish baduk book reviews and tournament/event reports. For this reason, I want you to join the Haengma team. You can help me build this website! I’m open to any ideas. If you are interested, please leave a comment or send me an email.
Diagram 1 — Endgame perspective
Now let’s get back to joseki. In the last articles, I discussed weak and strong points of this “first joseki”. I mainly looked at the situation from a middle game perspective, when the strength of the group is the most important thing.
Today I want to discuss the same shape, but from an endgame perspective. Let’s assume that both the white and black groups are alive. How many points is the move in Diagram 1 worth?
Diagram 2 — Simple endgame
We’ll start from the easiest variation. If black starts first white will defend with 2. Now white has 7 points and black 9 points. The key is to understand that black’s hane at T16 is gote and white T17 is sente. It’s very likely that players will play: white T17 – black T18 – white T16 – black S18.
Diagram 3 — Huge move
Let’s go back to the first Diagram. White 1 is sente. White not only shrinks black’s territory, but also extends his own. Now white has 9 points of territory and black has only 5.
The difference between this and Diagram 2 takes a little calculation. White’s territory is increased by 2 points, and black loses 4 points. Add those together, and white gets 6 points in sente. And because this is sente it’s twice as valuable. The move itself is really worth 12 points.
Diagram 4 — White Gote
Of course, white’s move from the last diagram is not always sente. Sometimes it’s gote. How can we judge whether it’s sente or gote? Let’s calculate how many points we would get if opponent played tennuki.
White would play the sequence 1-5 in Diagram 4. This time the black territory disappears, and white builds a huge territory worth 12 points. In a normal situation where black has some points in the upper side, white would get one more point at S19, because Q14 would be sente for white. In Diagram 4 we can’t count S19 as a point :(
By comparing this situation to Diagram 3, we get a difference of 8 points. This is made in the second move, so we need to divide its value by 2 and add it to our first move. Now we have 6 + 4 = 10 points in gote. More calculations are necessary to see how many points black can get if white plays tenuki after black 1 in Diagram 2.
Diagram 4 — Black Gote
Black captures one stone and increases his score by 5 points. In the meantime, white lost all his points because T14 is now black sente. The difference is 12 points. It’s again in the second move so we divide the result by 2 and get 6 points.
We can add all these results and get a final value of the move from Diagram 1. Diagrams 2 and 3 give us 6 points in sente, so 12 points in total. Diagrams 4 and 5 give us 5 points and 6 points. So we have: 6 + 5 + 6 = 17 points in gote.
Conclusion: If there is no other move bigger than 17 points, the move from Diagram 1 is worth 12 points (6 points in sente). If there is, then it’s worth only 17 points in gote.
Diagram 4 — Black to play
At the end of this short Whiteboard Sunday, I give you a real game tsumego. This shape happens really often in high handicap games after the tsuke-nobi joseki.
Related posts:
- Whiteboard Sunday – First Joseki
- Whiteboard Sunday – First Joseki #5
- Whiteboard Sunday – First Joseki #3
I solved the problem but it was hard for me. I had to put stones on board. For now too hard to solve it in my mind.
sometime, i confuse with the calculation.
this is a clear review.
thanks for your post.