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Pijngrens

 

User Created Go Slang
    Keywords: Go term, Humour

'Banana' (a.k.a. tesuji)

One day me and an opponent were in a weird mood, and every time we played a piece we would shout out something like "Let's see how you play against my 'errant roadkill fuseki'" or "I see you have chosen to play the 'overripe watermelon joseki'". Well, after a particularly clever play one of us shouted "It's the amazing 'banana tesuji'!!!!". Since then we have been calling tesujis 'bananas', i.e. "White P14 is 'banana' for this shape".

--BlueWyvern



'Rotten Banana'

When an opponent starts a ridiculous invasion in some obviously secure territory under the hopes that you may screw up. When you actually do screw up because you aren't paying attention, usually out of severe annoyance at your opponents rude playing style, his move is a 'rotten banana'. See SowDiscordInTheEnemiesCamp

--BlueWyvern



We used to call an odd corner sequence with a clearly biased result a noseki .

--Dieter


A deviation from joseki is joseki ayamari, but who knows that term? Back home we call it Fred Seki.

-- BillSpight


'Cooking the Chicken'

This means to play poorly. A friend was commenting to me that he was playing a high kyu player who was playing bizarre and unorthodox moves that he should have been able to beat but according to him he lost because he was "Cooking the Chicken". I thought he he was refering to some really obscure go proverb, it turned out, he was literally cooking chicken, jumping back and forth between the grill and his computer.

--BlueWyvern


It seems that in France, all the 'bad' moves are all 'belgian' something or other. I have heard mentioned 'Fuseki Belge', 'Joseki Belge', 'Shicho Belge' and 'Tesuji Belge'.
From my years in Rotterdam, I seem to remember that this attitude would be natural for the dutch as well.

I don't know why there's this agreement on the (lack of?) belgian intelligence... :-))

--Morten

And what about Swedes, Morten? The Norwegian I knew used to tell the same jokes about Swedes. It seems that each country has a neighbor or a minority.

 HolIgor

No, no, HolIgor, us norwegians are above that sort of thing.
The swedes may have jokes about us - we have true stories about them ;-)) Here's one



Oh, it's a lot worse than that... The English are in on it as well! Remember the old English army advice: "What do you do when a Belgian soldier throws a hand grenade at you? Pull out the pin and throw it back."

Seriously, Morten, it's all just frustration about what happens when we cross the borders and whoop the French and Dutch behinds in their respective tournaments :-). You had to be there, at the prize giving ceremony of the 1999 Obayashi Cup in Amsterdam. The Belgian contingent performed so solidly that tournament authorities openly questioned the Belgian rating system, which seems to turn a Belgian 2 kyu into a Dutch 3 dan :-) And don't get me started about my fellow countryman "Invincible", the world's only professional 5 kyu...

--Stefan


Please Stef, keep silent. Only mentioning His name makes me tremble with fear. He is truly a master of the game, only to be defeated when he hasn't been drunk the night before. In an interview He shed a small light on His secret: alcohol kills the weak neurones, so that the brain will only maintain the healthy ones. Being fewer in number, their tendency to link up increases, and oh, the emotions betake me ...

--Dieter



Well well well... Could you please shed some light on the identity of such mighty player?! You know, I live so far from the Castle...

--AvatarDJFlux



NO!!! ARE YOU CRAZY??? This is a public forum!!!

 (talk to me in private)

--Stefan



Regarding the 'Belgian' thread, I certainly know the following terms:

  • Belgian ko: A ko in a situation that will not have the desired result even if won.
  • Belgian seki: A temporary seki?
  • Belgian ko threat: A ko threat that can be answered by resolving the ko (and thus is not a ko threat)

Other terms that I and the people around me use:

  • stone-moving tesuji. No explanation needed.
  • foetsiekawari, which is an interesting contamination of the Dutch 'foetsie' (gone) and furikawari. It is used to denote a furikawari-like situation which is nevertheless clearly better for one of the players, or also for mochikomi?
  • the pain limit (which is a word in Dutch of which I do not know the usual English translation): The swallowest (sic) invasion such that the opponent is not happy with just enclosing his territory below it


BillSpight: Andre had a typo. I was going to change it to "shallowest", but I like the image of a swallow lightly dipping down into the opponent's moyo. :-)
I also like the term, "pain limit". It's high time we started developing our own go vocabulary. :-) Andre, what is the Dutch word? There's no reason to stick to English.


The Dutch word is pijngrens. I copied the discussion, which originally came below, to a separate page. --DieterVerhofstadt

Another little story concerning user created go slang.

One of the best known expressions for a certain kind of play is the 'eye-stealing tesuji'.
I was watching two players of dan strength, Corina and Roberto, playing one of those mad lightning games, ten minutes each on a chess clock, no byo-yomi. Because the board was already quite a mess anyway, Corina decided to play what she would call the 'foggiest' move possible, one for which the continuation was not at all clear. Roberto seemed a bit at a loss for one, too, but knew he had to play quickly, and was thus nervously waving a stone around in the air. At that point Corina couldn't refrain from a sly chuckle, saying: "It's the time-stealing tesuji..."

-- Mark Wirdnam


Thanks, Mark, this one definitely belongs in HumourAlmostProverbs. ;-)



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