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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 Sow discord in the enemy's camp. -- 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. -- Bill Spight


'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 referring 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, we 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

Jasonred: Really, the only one in the world? How about um... 1 kyu pros? Actually, to turn pro, don't you have to take an exam as either an insei or a private candidate? And doesn't passing immediately qualify you for a dan?

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 neurons, 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

-- Andre Engels

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. -- Dieter Verhofstadt

The English phrase is probably 'pain threshold'


[Diagram]

Skelley: In Holland we do have the expression "Belgisch Ko" for a move like this of Black.



Several other Dutch ones I know are:

  • mouw tesuji (sleeve tesuji): for those players who like to wear clothes with long or wide sleeves during play and shuffle the stones on their side of the board with the sleeve of their playing hand.
  • kotsumi: a bad kosumi (kots = puke)
  • koffiepauze (coffee break): a tenuki which is clearly too early. I.e. the opponents move should have been answered locally but instead the player to move is leaving the battlefield for a coffee break.

I know a few more which would need an 'adult content' page because they are based on the fact that the English word cut, sounds very much like a Dutch word that would refer to a certain part of the female body. So I'm not sure if I should put those on the SL...

-- Skelley


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. ;-)


One of our clubmembers in Gent (Belgium) invented a name for the invasion on the three-three point (san san): 'de smeerlap'. If you translate the dutch word it is something like 'the bitch'. It was made from frustration during handicap games because it works very often.

Barteken


I read somewhere a cute user-created term in an article by a pro (perhaps Guo Juan?) who said that she and her childhood contemporaries referred to shicho as "shaking his butt" -- for example, if Black traps White in a shicho, and White just keeps extending and Black just keeps blocking on alternate sides, then Black was "shaking White's butt."

[Diagram]
White "pushing snakes" into Black's center

Also, back when I was around 20k, I often played with my roommate, who was about 3 stones weaker. He used to express great frustration when I would start "pushing snakes" into what he thought was his territory, thereby reducing it.
-- TakeNGive

I suppose there is a typo in the diagram? =P --unkx80
Naw, no typo... we were just bad players. (I still am; haven't talked to him in years, so maybe he's gotten better. :-) -- TakeNGive

In the UK some players call this kind of chain of stones pushing into enemy soil a "worm". -- Tristan Jones

In Sweden you can hear players talking about intestines when this happens. -- Joorin

I know this kind of playing as "toothpaste Go". -- Harleqin



I've started using the term "coffin-nail" for a tesuji play that finally gets an opponent who is already losing badly to capitulate. -- BlueWyvern


I've coined a new phrase that I like to use in my own games. A "zone of pain" is a moyo so vast, solid, and intimidating, that the opponent has little choice but invade, and in doing so, will come under immediate and vicious assault. It works best when you use it with your name. Something like "I dub this moyo 'Momotaro's Zone of Pain'." -- BlueWyvern


This term apparently shows me up as an evil capitalist, according to the fluffy academics in the Durham University Graduate Society Go Club, but if we've been beaten so badly we've got minus points, I call it "negative equity." It's such a good description! -- Jenny Radcliffe ;)


powercut: a cut that 'shuts down' your opponent.


Benjamin Geiger: Are the sleeve tesuji and nuclear tesuji Weapons of Mass Disruption?


Jan: "Met de benen wijd" is used at my go club for a hazama tobi. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to translate, since SL is a family website - I'll let the other Dutch speakers decide :-)

tsjanl: "Spread legs" only becomes inappropriate in the mind of the reader. So let the innocent read this.

Jan: Yes, but the way it was used seemed to invite,,, a penetra^h^h^h^h^h^h^hmove, hmmm that's not quite right either. Let's just say that a hazama tobi invites a poke :-)



This is a copy of the living page "User Created Go Slang" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.