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Why Don't We Open At Tengen
Path: CentralLine   · Prev: Tengen   · Next: ThereIsNoTerritoryInTheCenter
    Keywords: Strategy

Amateurs, from 25 kyu to 7 dan, open in the corners at komoku, hoshi, sometimes takamoku or sansan, or, when they are really in an adventurous mood, at mokuhazushi. Why so ? Well, of course we all know the theory: corners first, then sides, then center. But probably we are merely imitating the pros. Bruce Wilcox, AGA 5-Dan and author of quite a few original ideas, has shown us the virtues of the Great Wall, opening at tengen.

  • Suppose there is one "best point" on the board - then this point must be tengen.
  • Professionals have opened at tengen during the exciting times of the New Fuseki creation.
  • Professionals are always battling for control of the center (a former professional has told me so in a game comment).

So, why don't we open at tengen more often? Have you ever opened at tengen ? What are your experiences ?

HolIgor: First of all there is Yamashita Keigo who does open at tengen nowadays. Look at [ext] Van Rongen's page. Yamashita Keigo is his new hero.

Second, I do play tengen with White quite often against one-sided fuseki (IGS 5k Against Low Chinese). Not as the first move but quite early in the fuseki. I win more than lose but that is 4k* level. Nobody else wants to try.


It is a better policy to start in a corner, as it is more difficult to gain territory early in the center. --TimBrent

HolIgor: While your statement is correct, playing first move at tengen sets up a ladder breaker for all four corners. It is a great advantage in the forthcoming fight.

And I would recommend you to look at the value of the corner plays a little bit differently. A play in the corner is good not because it helps to gain territory but because the corner is the place where building up a live group takes the least number of stones. In a way the moves in the corner are thick, provide the safe base from which to develop further strategy. A stable group in the corner does not always develop into a territory, but its stability may be helpful in obtaining territory elsewhere.


If I'm playing 9x9 I always want to start at tengen and always I'm afraid to, so I play in the corner instead :-( -- Jan

HolIgor: Maybe you'd have a little bit more courage if you knew that professionals start 9x9 at tengen. With 9x9 this move is evidently very strong.

Fhayashi: For 9x9, the tengen is more like a quadruple 5-5 point... Like playing an influence-oriented opening in four corners simultaneously...

Jan: OK, I'll start to try it! But I usually don't need ladder breakers on 19x19 because my joseki knowledge is awful :-)


TakeNGive (9k): I've opened at tengen a few times (maybe 5% of the time?), with mixed results. Sometimes it seems effective for White in 2- and 4-stone handicap games. I recently lost a game as Black, where White opened with 10-10 followed by three of the 10-3 points while I took the corners; but subsequent analysis showed a reading blunder late in the game. I've seen a very strong amateur player get good results opening at tengen. A Japanese pro (Kubomatsu) opened at tengen in all his games in the 1934 Oteai, after which he concluded that opening at tengen is feasible but difficult ([ext] John Fairbairn's MSOWorld article).


DaveSigaty: Pieter Mioch touches on tengen in his Daigo series [ext] episode one. I think that he makes a nice point about the purpose of a play at tengen which I reproduce below.

"One thing you should realize when talking about tengen is that this play is not about trying to make territory in the middle of the board. This can easily be seen below:"

Wasted Move

[Diagram]
11

"You won't see this kind of shape in your own games very often. But, now that you have it in front of you, it is obvious that a black play on the (marked) spot would be a wasted move. It is not necessary to defend this territory. If you really want to do something in the middle, a move at the 14-9 point looks better."


"This is not to say that Black cannot put his tengen stone to good use when making a large territorial framework, a moyo. Takemiya's games of the 80s are a very good example of how to make huge side/center oriented territory. I still, however, would like you to only think about the possible territory one can make with a tengen stone as an afterthought and not a prime directive. "

Dave: Basically I think that compared to a move in the corner or the side, the value of a play at tengen will have to be justified by its relationship to other stones played. Playing tengen on the first move means giving the opponent sente to choose a strategy that tries to prevent you from setting up such optimal relationships.

Dieter: Sure. And given the fact that pros rarely play at tengen, I assume they know how to "punish" tengen. But we amateurs are not able to find such a strategy. I wouldn't even know what such a strategy looks like. So I intend to find out for myself and I encourage others to do the same.

Bill Spight: Conversely, you might say that few players, even pros, know how to utilize an opening tengen play. ;-) When the New Fuseki was in vogue, of course a lot of games began with tengen. By 1970, statistics with pro komi games showed Black winning only 1/3 of the time with initial tengen, I was told.


Kris Rhodes: Someone above said something to the effect that playing Tengen gives the other player Sente and hence allows them to set things up so you won't be able to use that Tengen play in the future of the game.

It occurs to me that an interesting way to set the game's agenda even after playing Tengen as Black would be to not take any of the corners but instead to reply to White's opening corner plays in the corners she plays in as she plays them. She's still in Sente, of course, but by placing all the kakari where you want them to be, you've kind of set the future course of the game to an extent, which is kind of like a meta-sente, sort of.

I'm only 15 kyu so ignore what I just said.


Illich: I have put winning percentages of tengen as first move here: TengenStatistics


Kungfu philosophizes here:

Depends how you think. You could think tengen is a wasted move if you want to enclose the center, but then it takes a lot more moves than just one, to accomplish that. But with just one move you can have a radiating star in the center of the board which can act as a nexus for all your groups. "Don't get surrounded" (shut in), well, don't. Then you just need to worry about territorial balance. Just think until you see how your moves affect territory and how your opponent can respond with regard to territory. A tengen stone could be like the eruption of a volcano straight into the air, connecting or covering everything. Do you really want to spend 10 or 15 moves enclosing the center (and your opponent probably will not let you get that much...) or could you rather just occupy the pass with your most powerful soldier: the first move?

Something else. If you are playing a (basically) evenly ranked game, then taking the first move at tengen as Black, you are allowing yourself to play White but with some power in the center. (Remember that playing with this idea you are also paying double the komi in exchange for tengen. You were giving komi as B and now you are giving it as pseudo-White. -- DaveSigaty) This could be the edge which pushes the game in your favour. If you are just playing "conventional" Go and ignoring tengen in any of your moves, then that decreases your winning percentage when moving on the tengen first.

White moving on the tengen first is probably bad though, because Black will get too many corners and depress White's center.

Anyways... a final comment. What's the real difference between an 8- and 9-stone handicap game? Or a 6- vs a 7- vs an 8- stone handicap game? Are the handicap stones placed in a truly progressing way, or should they go around the edges before the center? Or should they always have a center stone? There's a proverb that there is no territory in the center, why is that proverb there?


Phlegmatic: Speaking as an 18k KGS player, I find that many of my games hinge on the issue of who plays at (or near to) tengen during the early mid-game. At my level, it seems to make a big difference, and although I've not checked the stats, I feel like I usually lose if I don't play there first - in my humble opinion Tengen is often a huge play psychologically, provided it is timed right.

So...in an even game, I'd be loathe to open at tengen as White, as Black now has an opportunity to fill two corners, but psychologically I'd feel very comfortable about opening at tengen as Black, despite komi. Feeling good about the middle right from the start definitely boosts my confidence and I'd like to think that improves my play.

Charles Matthews If you go more deeply into central strategies, they are clearly difficult.

Something that came up unexpectedly as I was doing database searches to track down 'one-percent patterns', i.e. patterns common enough to come up in 1% of pro games.

[Diagram]
Action at a distance

When Black starts at the 4-4 point, the next play in the 11-11 square based in that corner is sometimes the marked one: which is most likely outside influence or some other consequence of a fight in the lower right. Not true in the same way for other corner plays, I believe. So it does seem that top players can take the whole diagonal length of the board in their stride, and play deliberately to co-ordinate across the middle.

I think this is only just in range of the perception of good amateur players.



I think there could be another reason for this. A stone at 4-4 asks less for a local continuation than one on other points. Therefore, it might be that some extensive fighting takes place on the lower or right side or the lower right corner when the stone is on 4-4, while with a stone at 3-4 the pros would have come back to this corner before starting the fight elsewhere. Andre Engels
Yes, that kind of reason too. I've checked some figures and it seems to be 1.5% of the time for the 4-4 point, 0.5% for the 3-4 point, that the otherwise empty 11x11 space is next occupied as shown. Charles

Jasonred : I am a great fan of Tengen. It is all part of my idea that tengen is the "perfect" place to play, and the opening move of Kami no Itte. As such, I have come up with a (even more?) (crackpot?) theory and hypothesis about Tengen, Center, Corners


I started my tengen years in June 2001, in the last round of World Amateur Go Championship. I had a week before bought Yamashita's book and decided it is time to start something different.

The first trial ended in failure, but after that I've applied tengen in Finnish top tournaments, Nordic championship tournaments and European Ing Memorial tournament, with relatively good results. It should be noted that with W2 played in tengen I have 100% win ratio (ca. 10 games).

I've planned to write an essay (in Finnish) "My Tengen Years" ("Kun pelasin tengenin") about this phase, but probably only for the small Finnish go community to be safe from critics...

Playing tengen is fun. I remember in the Nordic Championship when I customarily played tengen and looked around the other players pondering the boring, old, set course of openings. (Please, don't be offended, it was the curious feeling of that moment.)

-- Vesa Laatikainen


BobMcGuigan: I don't begin with tengen because it is too difficult to make it effective against good play. I guess I agree with Bill in this regard. Obviously it is a possible move, but I'd venture to say that people win with it more because their opponent got confused (even pros) than because of the inherent virtue of the move. However, it is challenging for both players. The tengen player has to make the move useful, his opponent has to make it less useful. Vesa seems to have played it to break the routine. It can be very effective against a player who knows the standard shapes but doesn't really understand go fundamentals.

Charles Matthews Yes, I've been interested for a while in the parallelism between this view of early central influence, and the effect a big ko fight can have in 'unbalancing' and 'de-familiarising' the game: bringing 'fighting fundamentals' to the fore.


Did I say that I test run the tengen in our club meetings and in my mail-go games before trying it in important tournament games? Background study never hurts.

Yes, a part of the tengen is to get your opponent overreact and the other part is to inspire your own game. And the background study enables you (the tengen guy) to have a plan while the opponent just tries to find something useful.

-- Vesa


Reinhardt: Here is a link to [ext] John Fairbairn's article on Tengen. There is a part discussing that a possible reason pros seldom use the Tengen opening is that it is statistically more difficult to analyze variations and win percentages of these variations. In other words, it is not necessarily a bad opening move, just more difficult to handle. In fact it might be the best opening move, but that would be very hard to justify.



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This is a copy of the living page "Why Don't We Open At Tengen" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.