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Miai Strategy
    Keywords: Strategy

Miai strategy means playing so as to leave your opponent with a miai situation. Whatever option he chooses leaves you with an equally good option (or one that is only slightly worse). It is related to the concept of tedomari.

See Miai in the Fuseki.

John Fairbairn Intriguing. I would have said playing so as to leave *yourself* with the options. I wonder whether there's a practical difference depending on whether you view it as him, me or both.

Also, is miai *strategy* the right phrase? Just playing to leave miai seems something of a barren plan - the options remain for both players. Is it not the case that there has to be a higher goal, the true strategy, and that leaving miai is just a *tactic* to ensure that the strategy is implemented without too much collateral damage? Shuei is supposed to be the master of this, but I confess that I have never found it easy to see what he's up to.

Bill: Well, you are leaving yourself an option, even if your opponent takes one. :-)

Charles Makes sense to me, as a simple-minded explanation of amashi. If you play always to leave good defensive plays as miai, your opponent can play a number of attacking plays (as it seems) but you slip away from the pressure each time.

BobMcGuigan: Occasionally you see a player getting praise for maneuvering to play both points of a miai situation. It seems that miai options aren't always available. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that miai points are really equal in value. It must be an approximate thing, dependent on the fluid whole-board development. What once were miai points might no longer be such at a later time in then game.

Charles Well, that must be right and close games must often be about nuances 'breaking the symmetry' of exact miai.

Bill: It seems to me that if somebody gets both of two miai points, in most cases somebody has made an error, either in the play or in the assessement of miai.

Miai strategy is considered quite subtle, but historical examples are typically viewed as slow. The ultimate miai strategy, OC, is to play tengen at move 1. The statistics with komi seem to be against that play, however.

Jasonred: Well, the underlying concept seems simple enough. in descending order, your possible plays would:

A. Leave the opponent with NO good reply.

B. Leave the opponent with a forced reply which eventually gives you some good follow ups.

C. Leave the opponent a choice between two plays that will eventually give you good follow ups.

D and onwards. Even more open ended plays.

Quite far down the list. Bad plays which your opponent can reply strongly against.

Then plays which your opponent can outright exploit.

Near the bottom, plays which don't accomplish anything.

At the bottom, kill yourself in gote.

Hu: One strategic use of miai is to allow a weakish formation to attack or develop more than it might otherwise. If a formation can either escape when attacked one way or form two eyes when attacked another way, then it can itself be used to attack even though it might not yet have two eyes. The miai concept can be extended to more than two options. In a sense, miai strategy and flexibility might be the essence of Go.



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