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© 2011 Janice Kim

Learn to Play Go

Volume V
The Palace of Memory

Janice Kim 3 dan
with Jeong Soo-hyun 9 dan

Buy the full book at gobooks.com

In Volume V of this award-winning series, professional player Janice Kim reveals the fundamentals of shape and guidelines to correct opening and endgame play learned at the world’s top Go training ground, the Korean Go Academy.

Templates for fighting in any situation

Guidelines to correct shape

Opening theory made simple

Principles of standard sequences, or joseki

Techniques for winning endgame

Test Yourself sections check your progress

Approachable for newbies, invaluable for intermediate and dan-level amateurs

Praise for the Learn to Play Go series:

“By far the best English-language introduction yet published”
—Games Magazine

“Brilliant”
—R.G. Mills, British Go Association

“For those who want to get strong quickly”
—Cho Hoon-hyun 9 dan, Ing Cup World Champion

Don’t miss the first four volumes:

• Volume I: A Step-By-Step Guide to the Game

• Volume II: The Way of the Moving Horse

• Volume III: The Dragon Style

• Volume IV: Battle Strategies

Copyright Page

Published by
Good Move Press/Samarkand
PO Box 101
Corte Madera, CA 94976
www.samarkand.net

Copyright © 2003 & 2011 Janice Kim

All rights reserved. This book or any parts hereof may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from Good Move Press.

ISBN of print edition: 0–9644796–5–6

Illustrations by Michael Samuel
Book design by MikeSamuelGraphics.com

Conversion to SmartGo Books by John Mifsud

About the Author

Janice Kim

Janice Kim was born in Illinois in 1969. She became the first female student at the Korean Go Academy in 1983 and entered the professional dan ranks in Korea in 1987, the first Westerner ever to do so. She won the Fuji Women’s Championship in 1984, took second place in the World Youth Championship in 1985, and third place in the EBS Cup in 1994. She was promoted to 3 dan in 2003.

After graduating from New York University, Ms. Kim authored the five books of the Learn to Play Go series and founded the online Go company Samarkand. In 2008, in an effort to explore similarities in strategy games, she played in the World Poker Tour’s Woman’s Championship in Las Vegas and placed fourth. She currently resides in the San Francisco bay area with her husband and two children.

Contents

Learn to Play Go
Volume V
The Palace of Memory

Copyright Page

About the Author

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Templates of Fighting

Guidelines of Shape

1. Attach, Hane

The chapters in gray are included only in the full book.

2. The Tiger’s Mouth

3. The One-Point Jump

4. Jump-Cut the Knight’s Move

5. Cut, Extend

6. Prevent the Bamboo Joint

7. The Empty Triangle

8. Sacrifice Two

9. Cap, Knight’s Move

10. The Center of Symmetry

11. Peep, Connect

12. Hit the Head of Two (or Three)

13. The Squeeze

14. The Star Capture

Opening Guides

1. Play in the Corners in One of Five Ways

2. Enclose or Approach “Unbalanced” Corners

3. After the Corners, Play on the Sides

4. Extensions Looking Towards Invasions

5. Enlarge and Protect

6. Balance: Influence vs. Profit

7. Find Your Good Side

8. Make a Base

9. Stay Away From Strength

Opening: Test Yourself

Jungsuk Principles

1. The Star Point

2. The 3–4 Point

3. Other Common Jungsuk

The Endgame

1. But First, What is Endgame?

2. Sente and Gote

3. How to Calculate the Size of Endgame Moves

4. Hunting Big Endgame

Endgame Guides

1. Locate Endgame First

2. Take and Keep Sente

3. Base Related Moves are Urgent

4. Watch Your Liberties

5. Watch the Safety of Your Stones

6. Save the Endgame for the Endgame

Endgame: Test Yourself

Buy This Book

About SmartGo Books

Preface

Note on the Third Printing

In trying to help others to Learn to Play Go, I’ve tried to get into the mechanisms behind how we learn so I could appreciate and address the difficulties that all students face. To that end, I took a number of subjects and attempted to self-study from books, to see what was helpful to me and what wasn’t.

One thing I learned through this comedy of exploration is that although it helps to have a goal to keep one motivated to continue, even if I didn’t achieve the goal I set for myself, I enjoyed the process and I felt like I had learned something. The kicker here is that I would be hard-pressed to show what I had learned if I could not produce. For example, I was fairly certain that I could make a cake by studying cookbooks and following my friend Emma’s recipe closely. But while she makes the best carrot cake I have ever had, even following her recipe to the letter did not produce a cake as good as hers. So one could be forgiven for suggesting, upon eating my cake, that it’s a good thing that I enjoyed making it. To be sure, there was some conflicting information: one book indicated that I need to grease the pan only if the batter contained butter, whereas other books said to grease the pan regardless of whether you used butter or oil. When Emma was queried, she looked off into space for a moment before saying she hadn’t heard of a rule like that, but I should grease the pan if I needed to. I had a sudden flash of Go students asking me to clarify something they had read in a Go book. There’s no way to follow directions when there’s an apparent conflict of directions. And even when I seemingly exactly copied expert Emma, I had to be missing some key action, a twist of the wrist? a pinch more baking powder? to explain my missing the mark. Well, she’s been baking since she was a little girl. It’s tough to pick up baking, or Go playing, when you’re already an adult, no?

In between baking stunts, I began to study for the LSAT, the exam that students take for admittance to law school, with the idea that surely this is a discreet activity with many instruction books available that I could definitely learn to do well if I applied myself diligently. I took a diagnostic test in one book and did surprisingly well, so I entertained fantasies that I could learn not to make the mistakes that I had made and do even better on a follow-up test. I became really interested in the mechanics of the test, spending hours every day, reading and studying hundreds of pages of instructional material. After one month I took another diagnostic exam, and this time, did slightly worse. Sudden flash to the Go student who goes to Korea over the summer and enrolls as a Go student in an intensive course, and finds upon returning that while he or she could consistently win against a professional at seven stones before, is now hard-pressed to win at eight. If you feel like you certainly know more than you did before, how can this be? Is it really better to put the books back on the shelf?

The insight into the resolution of this situation came when I thought about how my son Malachi learns. A year ago, when he was almost seven years old, I caught myself wondering if school is now considerably less effective than it was thirty years ago, because, after all, he was struggling with reading some pretty basic books. I had read The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was young, and it seemed like the chasm between what he was reading and The Lord of the Rings was impossibly wide. We’ve spent the past year reading for nearly an hour a day, and the changes have been imperceptible on a day-to-day basis. Last night as he was bookmarking his page in The Two Towers before going to bed, I suddenly remembered my idle thought of a year ago. Perhaps school isn’t less effective nowadays, but now we give up too soon, if we don’t see immediate results.

There’s a Korean saying (I paraphrase) that a book will give up the truth after the tenth reading. Although it’s embarrassing on many levels for me to suggest that you ought to read Learn to Play Go ten times, I will just note observationally that I did make some startling progress on the LSAT after studying some pretty flawed study guides many many times even after I thought I had certain passages memorized.

In this third printing of Volume 5, I was able to correct some errors and clarify some awkwardnesses that may have made the journey to Learn to Play Go more frustrating than it needs to be. Many thanks to past readers for bearing with me, and giving me the opportunity to try to improve.

This book would not have been possible without the assistance of remarkably gifted graphic designer Michael Samuel, my teacher Jeong Soo-hyun, and my wonderful family and friends who still have not given up on me despite the lack of results so far.

Janice Kim
October 14, 2010

Acknowledgements

Much of this book is based on my teacher Jeong Soo-hyun’s original Go instruction books first published in Korean, and on my recollections of the many things he taught me while I was a Go student in Korea. Of course, I manage any errors and confusion all by myself.

Many thanks to Mike Samuel, my dear friend, without whom this book would seriously have never seen the light of day; to my husband Bruce Price, who read drafts and stayed up with a newborn every night so I could finally finish; Brian D’Amato who inspires, never tires, and edits; Serge Zoubok who kept the good ship Samarkand afloat; Trish McMillan who rescued the dogs from neglect; DeeDee Lee who inspired the illustrations; students past and present, who clarified what I was struggling to say; and all the readers of the Learn to Play Go series, who gave invaluable help and encouragement.

Janice Kim
April 1, 2003

Introduction

There are some things we think we have figured out about Go. Everyone who plays at a certain level knows them. Learning these things doesn’t require a huge feat of memory, but an understanding of some principles of the opening and the endgame and of something called, vaguely, “shape”.

If you have a grasp of these concepts – and if you can apply them – you have 80% of the skill of a world champion. This sounds impressive, but actually it’s not saying that much. In Go, there’s a fine line between genius and idiocy. What this knowledge does offer, though, is a way to look at a board and see only two or three possibilities, rather than the dozens confronted by a beginning-level player, or the rapidly-exploding probability tree that a computer attempts to crunch.

Advanced players probably have an easier time of it than beginners because when they’re trying to decide on a move they automatically discard most possibilities without even thinking about it. One way to do this is to follow shape guidelines. A checklist of these guidelines gives you a place to start and often a good hint as to what is going to be the best move.

First of all, what do we mean by “shape”? Good shape is an intersection between tactics and strategy. Tactically, you want your stones to act in the most efficient, effective way possible. Strategically, you are trying to surround: after all, the translation of the Chinese word for Go is “the surrounding game.”

But you can’t hope to win by just trying to surround your territory, because you have an opponent who will foil your attempts. To surround more territory than your opponent, you have to surround your opponent’s territory.

This may sound cryptic, but you don’t have to be from Planet Zen to do it. In fact you would probably do it naturally in a real-life situation. Consider the following example. Imagine a one-square mile of valuable land. Both you and a rival have a claim to it. You could just divide it in half, but instead you agree to draw the border using a test of horsemanship. Each of you has a saddlebag that lets out a small stream of white or black pebbles to mark your border. At high noon both of you take off. If you and your rival are riding neck and neck at furious speed, the right strategy will immediately become obvious:

Get in front and cut ’em off!

Doing this effectively and efficiently is the essence of making good shape. Let’s see how this translates into stones on the grid.

As described in Volume II, The Way of the Moving Horse, there are six basic relationships between stones: extending (called the stretch previously), the diagonal, the one-point jump, the knight’s move, the two-point jump, and the large knight’s move.

These relationships are called haengma in Korean. This word, translated roughly as “the way of the moving horse,” shows the Korean emphasis on thinking of a group of stones as a horse moving across the playing field of the board, rather than of each move being an individual unit.

According to this model, a move is decided not so much on its location but on its relationship to previously placed stones. Choosing where you place your stones is akin to choosing between a fast horse and a strong horse. When you put stones right next to each other they are very strong, but they lack speed. Ideally, you want to move as fast as you can without losing strength. In Go terms, this means that you want to surround as much territory as possible without losing connectivity.

In practice, when you are trying to manage a whole board sometimes you’ll give up connectivity to gain territory somewhere else. To continue the equine metaphor, this is somewhat akin to letting the wolves bring down a weak horse to gain time for the others.

So it’s not just the parts of the horse that have a relationship to one another: the wolves – that is, your opponent’s stones – also have a relationship to the horse. They are in fact the same six basic relationships, with of course a whole new and menacing meaning. And, since the relationship between the two stones is now a hostile one, we give them new names. Instead of extending, we have attaching, and instead of the diagonal, we have the shoulder hit. The one-point jump becomes the one-point approach; the knight’s move becomes the knight’s-move approach. The two-point jump becomes the two-point approach, and, finally, the large knight’s move becomes the large knight’s approach.

Most, if not all, of your moves (except for the earliest “sketching” or “outpost” moves in the opening of the game) should be one of these basic shapes. This is your tool kit of moves. As more stones are added and fighting begins, the shapes will crystallize into patterns that I call the “Templates of Fighting.” These are assemblages of seemingly unrelated good shapes that I’ve found constantly recurring in positions between skilled players.

The Templates of Fighting are like forms in the martial arts. Watching a martial arts demonstration, you see how a kind of idealized fight might look if both combatants were fighting in the most effective way. Just mimicking what you see is a good first step to learning how to fight well. Next, as you practice the forms, your muscles memorize the moves and how they fit together. In an actual fight, of course, you won’t robotically go through the form, but hopefully you won’t be just flailing your arms either: you’ll use elements of the forms, sometimes modifying them a bit to fit the specific situation.

Now, you could just memorize the Templates and discover on your own how they form the basis of good shape and how they can guide good play. However, I’m going to follow them up with a section covering fourteen specific “Guidelines of Shape.” In my case I learned the Guidelines and then much later made up the Templates, but luckily now that I’m writing it all up myself, I can present the proof first and then the pudding.

To construct the Templates of Fighting, I divided fights into categories based on the basic relationship between the stones in conflict, and then into subcategories based on the size of the fighting force. Going back to our menacing wolves, remember that there are six relationships they can have to the horse. The closer the wolves are, the more threatening they become. A stone two points away is actually pretty far off – too distant to be an immediate threat – so the two-point approach and the large knight’s-move approach are usually too far away to pick a fight. So, when we build the Templates of Fighting, we are essentially talking about four different relationships: when stones are attached, when they are one point apart, when they are a knight’s move apart, and when they are diagonally apart. The subcategories are simple ones of numbers: whether the fight is 1-on-1, 2-on-1, 3-on-1, or 4-on-1. You’ll recognize the importance of this classification if you’ve ever seen a kung fu movie in which the bad guys, one by one, attack the hero and are easily rebuffed. Really, they ought to get together and coordinate their efforts.

The Templates of Fighting

Template One: Attachment

Diagram 1: 1-on-1

Here two opposing stones are in contact. This would be a stone with one stone attached right to it, a 1-on-1 fight.

Diagram 2: 2-on-1

The next stage is the 2-on-1 fight. If there are two stones against one, starting from Diagram 1, the most effective move is to hane or attach right next to the opposing stone again, working from your own current stone.

Diagram 3: 3-on-1

The next stage would be the 3-on-1 fight. If there are three stones against one, starting from Diagram 2, the most effective fighting move is to hane again, attaching right next to the opposing stone, working from either of your previous stones. In this stage, the opposing stone is in atari.

Diagram 4: 4-on-1

The final stage is the 4-on-1 fight. If there are four stones against one, the most effective position for those four stones is to hane again, blocking all the liberties, capturing the opposing stone and removing it from the board.

What does this all mean? Supposing you were playing a game in which for every one move your opponent made, you could make four moves. In that case, the most efficient thing for you to do would be to surround your opponent’s stone, capturing it and removing it from the board.

Diagram 5

If you played your fourth move at 4 here, you wouldn’t capture, and the opponent’s stone would remain on the board. This result is less efficient than Diagram 4. Obviously Black is still in a superior position, but that’s natural, because Black outnumbers White 4 to 1. Since in Go we’re generally not going to be able to outnumber our opponents on the board, we have to maximize how efficiently our stones work. In this diagram, Black hasn’t used his four moves in the best possible way.

Diagram 6

Of course we don’t get four moves for every one of our opponent’s moves, but it stands to reason that this principle of maximum efficiency holds even when, as in a normal game, we alternate moves. For example, you may have heard the expression “a ponnuki (or star capture – that is, four stones capturing one as in Diagram 4) is worth thirty points.” That’s because the four stones have achieved their maximum strength potential by capturing an opposing stone.

Now suppose that you used five stones instead of four to capture one stone, as in this diagram. This is not a star capture; we don’t value this one nearly as much. Why? Because the marked stone is not very efficient. It’s worth something, but you’d much rather have it doing something more valuable, like occupying an empty corner, than backing up stones that don’t need any help.

Diagram 7

Going back, we can see all kinds of implications in this: for example, if you’ve got stones in this array, it’s not a very efficient use of a move to capture White. More likely, you’re hoping that the beleaguered white stone will try to make a run for it. Then you can maximize the value of each move you play.

Diagram 8

Going back further, you can easily guess that playing 3 here is going to be inefficient.

Diagram 9

Going way back to the beginning, the implication is that Black 1 is not the most efficient move. Of course, that’s not to say this move is bad, or that it’s always worse than the hane; if there are other stones on the board, there are other factors to take into consideration, which may mean that playing a locally less inefficient move is the best play.

But what we can take away from this is that when two stones are next to each other, the most efficient way of fighting is going to be the hane – that is the most effective, efficient place for two stones fighting against one to be. In a 1-on-1 fight, whoever plays first is itching to hane.

Diagram 10

Here’s the 2-on-2 fight. Both sides want to “get in front and cut ’em off.” If after Black’s marked hane White extends at 1, then if Black follows at 2, we get this shape, called “hitting the head” of two stones.

Diagram 11

To avoid having the head of two of her stones hit – where Black would definitely have gotten in front and cut her off – White cuts.

After the cut, Black extends. Why?

Diagram 12

Imagine that Black plays the atari at 2 instead. After White runs at 3, Black has a cutting point. Suppose Black connects at 4. At this stage, it’s the same as if Black had extended at 4, White had extended at 3, and Black had made a slow turn at 2. Black would rather have the option of extending the other stone at A.

Diagram 13

After Black extends, next White wants to extend. Which way? If White extends at 2 here, along the side of the Black stones, Black can hit the head of two stones again at 3.

Diagram 14

Neither side would like the head of two stones to get hit, so extending in a way that avoids that in the end creates a shape I call the pinwheel.

Template Two: One Point Apart

Diagram 15

Now imagine another fight where the opposing stones are separated by one point:

Diagram 16

Still trying to get in front and cut ’em off, if it’s 2-on-1, Black tries attacking with the knight’s move.

Diagram 17

In a 3-on-1 battle, Black plays another knight’s move.

Diagram 18

Just as in our 2-on-2 combat when the stones are making contact, in a 2-on-2 fight when stones are one point apart, once again White tries to cut. In this case the best way to do this is to jump cut the knight’s move.

Diagram 19

After both sides cut, notice the shape reverts. Once again, we are back at the pinwheel.

Diagram 20

Notice that Black has a choice with his second extension: he can play at A. He can also tightly wrap up White’s cutting stone with 4.

Diagram 21

In the latter case, White will most often consider using that stone as a sacrifice. White’s lost some pebbles, but she’s kept her horse’s nose out in front. If it turns out that this (or the extension at A in the previous diagram) is too good for Black, walling off a huge Black territory or blocking the escape of baseless White stones, that generally means White’s cut was too aggressive.

Diagram 22

In the 2-on-1 battle, Black can also attach.

Diagram 23

If White cuts, if Black extends at 4, we again get the pinwheel.

Diagram 24

If the cut is too aggressive, where extending or tightly wrapping White’s stone as in Diagram 20 would give Black a great result, instead of the cut, White can hane on the outside.

Diagram 25

If Black pulls back, White can then extend at 3.

Diagram 26

If Black extends at 2 here, White can push in at 3, and Black pulls back at 4.

Template Three: A Knight’s Move Apart

Diagram 27

Here’s a fight where the opposing stones are a knight’s move apart.

Diagram 28

Still trying to get in front and cut ‘em off, if it’s 2-on-1, Black can cap at 1. (The cap is a one point approach from the top; a one point approach from underneath is called the slide.) Spin this around 90 degrees and you can see that it reverts to the 2-on-1 battle in Diagram 16.

Diagram 29

If the cut is too aggressive, White can attach on the outside at 1 here. Black can hane, White pulls back, and Black connects at 4 or A.

Diagram 30

Here the White stone approaches Black’s corner stone with a knight’s move.

Diagram 31

White can lean at 1. If Black pushes at 2, White stays in front with 3.

Diagram 32

If it’s Black’s turn, Black can cap at A, or play the diagonal at 1. The slow and strong move at 1 was called the Shusaku diagonal, after the Go great who often played this way in the opening. I call this shape the “mouse” – the two black stones form the ears (in this case with an un-Mickey-ish white nose).

Template Four: A Diagonal Apart

Diagram 33

A diagonal approach is bit awkward locally, because the follow-up 2-on-1 and 3-on-1 conflicts look like inefficient attachment fights. However, it can be useful in some cases – for example, as a shoulder hit that reduces your opponent’s area.

Diagram 34

In this 2-on-2 battle, Black is careful to stay in front. If Black plays at A instead of 2, White can hit the head of two stones.

Diagram 35

As long as White wants to push from behind, Black should let her, and keep himself out in front.

Diagram 36

If White cuts him off on the other side at 1 (A in Diagram 34) here, Black cuts her off at 2.

Diagram 37

If White tries a little speed to get ahead with the knight’s move at 1, Black can still stay in front with the jump at 2.

With this background, let’s look now at the Guidelines of Shape.

Guidelines of Shape

1. Attach, Hane

When you attach, you are trying to start a direct fight by making sudden contact with enemy stones. Usually the best response to an attachment is to resist strongly by playing the hane, trying to get the upper hand by wheeling around the attaching stone as quickly as possible.

Diagram 1

White attaches at 1. How should Black respond?

Diagram 2

A hane with Black 2 is correct (a hane on the other side is also possible). If White extends at 3, Black gets a superior position by connecting at 4, or playing at A or B.

Diagram 3

Responding to White 1 by extending at 2 isn’t so powerful as a hane. In some cases extending is a good idea, but generally it’s the weaker play.

“Attach, hane” is the smallest tactical example of our strategic mantra: Get in front and cut ’em off.

Of course, you’ll often see people playing something other than the hane in response to an attachment. There are two possible reasons for this:

1) They are playing in a slack, inefficient way;
2) They have first considered the hane and after careful deliberation have discarded it in favor of something else.

For instance, if you’re playing a handicap game as Black and so already have a big advantage, and you want to avoid complications and tough fighting, you may not want to hane in response to an attachment. You might extend instead, or even ignore the attachment and play somewhere else. Remember, though, that avoiding fights because you think your opponent is better than you – and not because of the board position – is not the way to become good enough to win without a handicap.

Diagram 4

White attaches at the 3–4 point to Black’s star point stone. How should Black answer?

Diagram 5

The hane at 1, with White making a base in the moves to 4 and Black solidifying the corner, is a standard sequence. (Black could have also played the outside hane at White 2.)

Diagram 6

Just extending at 2 is slack. White takes the corner with 3.

Figure 1 (1–29)

This is the first match of the Wangwi title best-of-seven series between Cho Hoon-hyun 9 dan (White), and Yu Chang-hyuk 6 dan, played on May 2nd, 1995. How would you respond to Yu’s attachment at 29?

Figure 2 (30)

White plays the hane at 30.