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Heavy
Path: Mistake   · Prev: Greedy   · Next: HomeAdvantage
  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: Shape

A heavy group is one that is too important to sacrifice, but which requires so much defence that defending it will result in a significant loss.

See also older discussion, now at heavy versus overconcentrated.

Heavy play usually counts as a mistake. Perhaps the most convincing general reason to play heavily is to save cutting stones, as part of a divide and conquer strategy; in that case the point is that your heaviness is balanced by compensation in the form of your opponent's weak group(s).

See Heavy Examples.


deft: If you played a stone which was not kikashi, it represents some investment - if you want to give it up you need to make back that investment somehow, but the problem with a heavy group is that you've made a huge investment in something which turned into a weak group of stones. Now you cannot sacrifice it, because you won't be able to make back the investment that the group represents.


victim: I think the main difference between heavy and light is: in a heavy group the stones are solidly connected, while a light group consists of stones that can still be cut. That way you can throw away parts of a light group, but a heavy group can only live or die as a whole.

The words heavy and light apply only to groups in the opponent's sphere of influence.

You should connect solidly in your own sphere of influence, since you don't want to lose any of them, but in the opponent's sphere of influence, scatter your stones - since you don't need to save all of them in order to succeed.


Charles Matthews: It's an interesting comment, and I can see that it is reasonable debating position. It does however then make me think that sphere of influence doesn't mean quite the same as framework: it should be a broader term.

[Diagram]
Heavy play



For example, B1 here is a mistake. After W2 to attack, you can say that Black has a heavy group.

Charles Matthews

victim One could argue that the group becomes heavy as soon as White invades and expands the sphere of influence. :)

Even if I make a marvellous wall constituting one border of my moyo, after some invasions and fights that wall may end up a heavy group. I wouldn't call it heavy as long as it's a moyo border.

But I see what you mean. In the case above, heaviness is just one move away even if I use the equivocation in my previous two paragraphs, so everyone would call B1 heavy before W2 is there.

How about this:

The words heavy and light apply only to isolated groups or groups in danger of being isolated.

Charles I think that's probably true. It might be helpful: for example if there is a ko fight happening, the 'danger' can be in unexpected places; and it may be a sensitive comment on the game that one should play more lightly (because some large-scale exchanges can occur).

[Diagram]
Common in the Kobayashi formation

In this kind of case, which is typical of contemporary go, both W1 and W3 are attempts to play lightly.



I feel there may be some aspect of 'contiguity', to add to framework theory, which expresses more clearly this as a concept. It obviously is an advantage to me, if my opponent makes a heavy play on the outer edge of my framework.



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This is a copy of the living page "Heavy" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.