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Kikashi Sente Discussion
Path: ForcingAndInitiative · Prev: LossMakingThreats · Next: KikashiAndInfluence There are some moves on the board that have to be answered by the opponent, otherwise a local position would crumble. These moves are called forcing moves or kikashi. Playing these moves usually gives some positional advantages to the forcing side, but a ko threat is lost as the result. I think losing a ko-threat is not really an issue. Deliberately losing flexibility is. Dieter It also often happens that playing a kikashi which does not gain enough profit is actually aji keshi.
White has to answer at 2 or a in order to live in the corner Kikashi stones should be considered lightly in many cases and sacrificed if their defence makes the formation too heavy. Sometimes weaker players come up with a move which they consider kikashi, but which is actually a thank you move. This should be avoided. I don't like at all this "weaker players" phrasing. All of us, weak or strong have to be aware of kikashi being possible thank you moves. --Dieter DieterVerhofstadt: Black 1 in the above diagram is not an example of kikashi, but an example of local sente. There is an important difference between kikashi and sente, and once again, I don't want to affirm here that I understand it. Here is an attempt to distinguish between kikashi and sente: Kikashi or forcing moves , are moves that are played in order to force the opponent to answer in a certain way. The kikashi stones don't achieve a local advantage, but are meant to serve later purposes. If the opponent answers in the expected way - submissively - and tries to capture them later, they are often sacrificed, as they have already served their purpose. Sente moves are moves that require an answer, if the opponent doesn't want to suffer a local defeat. The difference with kikashi moves, is that sente moves do achieve a local goal and that they should not be sacrificed if you don't want that local achievement go to waste. Charles Matthews The main point is that kikashi are sente and (a) aren't to be criticised for bad aji keshi and (b) don't require defensive plays afterwards, so are light not heavy. Otherwise forcing plays can be a mistake. Dieter seconds this phrasing by Charles. Some examples:
Black 1 is a peep, a typical example of a kikashi. Due to his marked tiger shape, White is already connected, and there is hardly any aji left in this position. So Black's move is justified: he forces White to confirm the choice she already made: connect her stones. Black 1 does several things at a time: it destroys some eye shape, and it can serve as a ladder breaker later, or be a stone that is just in the right spot to win a semeai. But Black 1 is a stone to be treated lightly. It is not an important stone. It is a kikashi.
From the same diagram, we see that White can also peep at Black's marked TigerShape. This move is sente : it also forces the opponent to answer, but it has a local achievement too. White 1 enhances the strength of the White wall, and should by no means be sacrificed, since that would imply the sacrifice of the whole wall !
Suppose White is ahead in territory but Black has more influence. With 1 and 3, White forces Black to take some territory at the top. After his submissive answers, she jumps to 5. Her stones 1, 3 and 5, will have some influence on the proceedings in the center. If Black makes an attempt to capture 1 and 3, they should be sacrificed in order to strengthen 5. It may be useful to illustrate the difference between a local sente move, a kikashi and a yosumiru. If we define kikashi in general by a move which forces an answer, then a local sente move and a yosumiru are just different ends of the spectrum, so to speak. But it seems that a kikashi, in addition to 'forcing an answer' is also often used to describe a move which is ready to be sacrificed, which is played outside the normal line of play, answered and then left alone. As such, a kikashi is much more 'speculative' than a local sente move or a yosumiru. Of course, the distinction between kikashi and thank you moves is another subject, and not always easy to make :-) In Strategic Concepts of Go, Nagahara defines kikashi as follows:
See also KikashiAndInfluence BillSpight: Just a linguistic note. From a linguist's or lexicographer's point of view, words typically have more than one meaning. I can identify three main senses of sente, for instance. This point of view is descriptive: how do people actually use the word? There is also a prescriptive point of view: How should people use the word? There is not always agreement on this, of course, or else people would use the word as they should. ;-) From a technical point of view, it is nice to make a clear distinction between synonyms, so that they do not overlap. One may then prescribe a meaning for a technical term that is narrower than common usage. In the case of sente and kikashi I think that there is plainly an overlap in common usage, rather than a clear distinction. (And this does not bother me. :-)) It is a question of nuance.
In this diagram I think that most Japanese go players would describe the plays, Black 1 and White 4 as kikashi and sente, respectively. If asked if Black 1 was sente, they would say of course. If asked if White 4 was kikashi, they would say yes, but. It sounds a little funny. However, they would later call the black stone at 1 a kikashi stone, but would not call the white stone at 4 a kikashi stone. A kikashi stone is one you can easily throw away. I'm not living in Japan, now. Maybe DaveSigaty would like to check my sense of usage. DaveSigaty: I can't clarify the actual usage. I would like to blame my Japanese ability but I suspect that also my general conversations about Go do not rise to the necessary heights :-) I think that the following is very interesting. It is from Brian Chandler's "Translator's Notes and Terminology" at the beginning of Beyond Forcing Moves?:
In addition to the help with the meaning of kikashi, I also like this for the definition of thickness which is different from (and I think more subtle than) the way I have thought about it up to now. Very interesting. :-) Thanks, Dave. --Bill One good use for forcing moves: If you are playing a rengo and you are weaker than your partner, you can play a forcing move so that you don't have to respond to a hairy situation and possibly screw it up, and possibly you could end up denying your opponents' strong player the chance to move. -BlueWyvern Harpreet: I've been told (while playing aji-keshi) that I was playing sente moves that were NOT kikashi. That is they were forcing (in the sense that they required a response) but not useful. Kikashi means "useful move". Perhaps that isn't the formal definition but it does coincide with what is written above (specifically, the "cause to work" part). I learned this terminology distinction from a stronger, Japanese-speaking player. Charles I've added something about the distinction on the thank you move page. It would actually be helpful to have a non-alias 'forcing move' page to refer to that page and this one. Charles Matthews A very old joke from my club: a move is sente if you hope your opponent doesn't answer it ... There are no true forcing moves in go. But there are many moves that ought to be answered locally. Perhaps there is a possible tenuki graph, which oscillates:
and so on, up and down, through amateur kyu and dan grades, before you get some agreement, perhaps at strong amateur level, on which plays really are proper to call 'forcing'. Confused: Would this be an acceptable definition? Forcing Move: A move your opponent answers the way you hoped he would. Charles A move your opponent answers the way you thought he would, even though he knew you thought he would think he should and hoped he wouldn't. Perhaps 'confused' will apply to several of us shortly. Anyway, the fundamental point isn't whether you are going to get an answer - who knows? It's the distinction between a kikashi and a thank you move. Confused: I thought, the distinction was something like this:
I agree with everything, except that sente always gives an immediate benefit except for keeping the initiative. Okay, here I go:
The whole point is between brackets: (if the opponent answers). The kikashi is supposed to be local sente in pos 1 and to affect the global position more if unanswered, than your leaving pos 2. However, locally that sente move may incur a minor loss, but combined with the plan it gives an advantage. Pos 1 and pos 2 can be far away from each other or touch the same group (such as play kikashi before living). Rob Van Zeijst in his column The magic of Go: For an amateur, it is often hard to determine whether a move is a kikashi or a waste of potential. The average player will decide that a move is a kikashi if it is answered, as this will indicate that he has kept sente (initiative). There is no simple description for a kikashi. If in doubt, follow this rule of the thumb: A kikashi has outside significance while the answer to it usually has no or little value. This appears to mirror the idea given about kikashi in James Davies's book, Attack and Defense, incidentally: the only proviso is whether the outside significance creates more aji than the use of the forcing move dissipates. Substantially stronger players than I could probably have long and bitter arguments over that... Path: ForcingAndInitiative · Prev: LossMakingThreats · Next: KikashiAndInfluence This is a copy of the living page "Kikashi Sente Discussion" at Sensei's Library. (C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0. |