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Kikashi
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  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: EndGame, Tactics, Go term

A kikashi is a sente move that produces a certain effect and can then be abandoned without any great loss. It is usually translated as forcing move.

There has been a lively kikashi sente discussion which showed the necessity to quote from literature how we should understand the concept of kikashi. See also forcing move misunderstandings.

Quotes from well-known authors

From Attack and defense by James Davies and Ishida Akira.: A forcing move may be defined as a sente move that brings its player some potential advantage without having to be followed up or defended.

From Strategic concepts of Go by Nagahara Yoshiaki and Richard Bozulich: A kikashi is a forcing move played to produce an effect. That is, a kikashi is a play which must be answered, usually in just one way, the exchange of the kikashi and the answer being useful in some way to the player of the kikashi. The terms kikashi and sente may seem to have the same meaning, but kikashi is applied to moves which are more or less incidental to the main flow of play. Once played, kikashi stones can typically be abandoned without any great loss.

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 Attack and Defense, incidentally: the only proviso is whether the outside significance creates more aji than the use of the forcing move dissipates.


Part of the discussion was about the Linguistic meaning of kikashi. The other part considered the relation with aji-keshi, sente and thank-you move. Consensus yielded:

The main point is that kikashi are sente and

  • aren't to be criticised for bad aji keshi
  • don't require defensive plays afterwards, so are light not heavy.

Otherwise forcing plays can be a mistake.


Examples

[Diagram]
Kikashi

B1 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.

B1 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 capturing race. But B1 is a stone to be treated lightly. It is not an important stone. It is a kikashi.


[Diagram]
Sente

From the same diagram, we see that White can also peep at Black's marked tiger shape. This move is sente : it also forces the opponent to answer, but it has a local achievement too. W1 enhances the strength of the White wall, and should by no means be sacrificed, since that would imply the sacrifice of the whole wall !


[Diagram]
More kikashi

Suppose White is ahead in territory but Black has more influence. With W1 and W3, White forces Black to take some territory at the top. After his submissive answers, she jumps to W5. Her stones W1, W3 and W5, will have some influence on the proceedings in the center. If Black makes an attempt to capture W1 and W3, they should be sacrificed in order to strengthen W5.



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