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Thick territory
    Keywords: Strategy

For those who haven't been here from the beginning: the thickness concept has given rise to a lot of discussion. The page as it is now still reflects the viewpoint of the only advocate of the idea that thickness includes influence. I was that advocate and I have been gradually walking away from the idea. Recently, I took part in a lecture by a 7 dan, who made the following interesting point:

[Diagram]

According to the 7d, Cho Chi Kun says the following about this position. White's territory is small, compared to Black's influence. But White's territory is thick, so that she can attack Black's influential position at a at a later stage.

So, while I had always thought only influential positions can be thick, Cho Himself talks about thick territory. Also, we clearly must not see the above position as a fair trade of White territory and Black thickness, but of White territory AND thickness and Black influence.

In order to understand this better, I asked the following question:

[Diagram]

How do you judge this exchange then. B2 makes the Black group thick (he confirms): there is no attack at a anymore. Now it is White territory against Black influence. does this mean that with W1 White's territory has become much bigger ?

He answered that the exchange is favourable for White, as B2 makes Black overconcentrated, which didn't really answer my question.

Dieter



Gronk: Well this is confusing. Does the above imply that any position that can be said to be certain territory (i.e., can't be killed and territory not easily reduced) can also said to be thick? Surely there must be some sense of influence in the idea of thickness. In fact, if it weren't influential, there'd be no harm in playing near it. More clarity is needed here.



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