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Shunt
  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: Tactics, Go term

[Diagram]
A 'shunt'

A shunt is this kind of micro-ladder.



It is an elementary tactic, but not so easy to see several moves away.

Here it means 'hitting something that immediately hits something else'. That is, B1 is atari and hits the white stones into BS.

When the position is shown explicitly as above, this is just a one-move reading problem; and shunt applies simply to B1. But it could possibly mean a three-move problem like BS - White WC - B1.

Charles Matthews


kritz This looks closer to a net to me. Last night I was burned by this. It lead me to wonder whether there is a "formula" to avoid getting surrounded. Something along the lines of "if black has only three liberties across to escape, make sure white does not place you two stones deep on one side and one on the other." I consistently have this trouble. It seems to be the cause of most of my large stone loses. Can you explain the difference between a shunt and a net?

Charles The difference is - you are probably expecting a net.

This is a very simple tactic, but like a snapback one can become stronger by recognising it in advance.

It is an atari at the nose of an empty triangle, if we're discussing it in terms of shape.


Note on English

Shunting is what is done on the railways, to sort out rolling stock and create long trains. Also, a shunt can occur when car A hits car B from behind, and then car B hits car C just on momentum.

I introduced this term in Teach Yourself Go. Why should Richard Hunter have all the terminology fun? One player told me he got to shodan by learning about One-Two-Three and shunts. (Sadly, the effect was only temporary.) But he said go teaching should have more content at this, rather elementary level.

Charles

unkx80: Question: Is your "shunt" referring to the repeated ataris, or just B1? (Answer added above.)

HolIgor: Charles, can you explain the word? I know the electrotechnical meaning of the word "shunt", but it does not apply. And Oxford English dictionary online does not come with anything useful too. Drawing back?

Charles It seems that the car crash meaning, like this, is slang; but this isn't very colloquial, really. All small children learn this from Thomas the Tank Engine.

John F. Actually Charles is betraying his roots. As a child he should have said dunsh.

Charles Well, that baffles my Geordie expert ...

HolIgor: So many new words and notion... I am baffled. Hm... OED + google search help to translate this fine example of English humour (I recon) into a guess that Charles could be from the North Eastern part of England.

Charles Actually John is from the North East, I'm from the North West (different dialect). I presumed dunsh was Geordie, probably related to dunt (hit) which is Scots. But it's not known to my wife (from Newcastle).



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