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Pincer
Difficulty: Beginner
Keywords: Attack & Defence
A pincer (Japanese: Hasami) is a move which attacks an invading stone from both sides.
As a novice, I only feel comfortable making a pincer move when the group that my opponent is attacking is fairly strong, as this diagram shows. Otherwise I prefer to make an extension or attachment. author: FCS I took a liberty to rearrange your stones a little to make it look more conventional. --HolIgor Note that white 1 here is actually a very bad move, this move hardly improves on passing because the stone is so weak. Going back to the first diagram, remember that white also has a one-stone group left. It will be almost automatical that either the corner or the pincer stone becomes strong while white is settling her own stone. -- AndreEngels Scartol: What can we say is the purpose of the pincer? From what I can tell, it appears to be an attempt at miai -- if the white stone tries to run (in the first example), black goes beneath and connects. If white tries to settle, black secures influence on the outside. Is there anything I'm missing or misunderstanding? (Probably a safe bet..) Adamzero: When I pincer my rationale is this: a) by squirming, my opponent will hopefully let me solidify my corner territory in sente b) prevent my opponent from settling, and by chasing him out in the center build territory and/or influence/thickness. In the case of the one space pincer off of hoshi, I'm inviting my opponent to jump to the san-san in order to build influence in a direction that I get to choose. (Because jumping out from a one space pincer is rarely very good: I get to solidify my corner more, and there is no way to slide under my stones to get eye space.) Bill Spight: A pincer, as stated above, is an attack. It may, and usually does, serve other purposes. A pincer prevents the attacked stone from forming an ideal base. Around 400 years ago, this was a popular start:
W 2 prevented Black from making a shimari, and then B 3 prevented White from making a base on the 3d line. White would like to extend at least to 3. A 3 space pincer at a would allow White to extend to b, which is cramped.
White now typically played in an open corner, satsified with having prevented a Black shimari.
Later, people realized that Black need not hurry to attack W 2. If Black played in an open corner and White extended from W 2 to make a base, Black could make a shimari in the other corner, which was better. Even later, people realized that White did not have to hurry to prevent Black's shimari, but could play in the top left corner in a way that worked with a later kakari at 2. If Black made a shimari, White could play first in a third corner. Such realizations were the beginning of fuseki theory. This is a copy of the living page "Pincer" at Sensei's Library. (C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0. |