When In Doubt, Tenuki

    Keywords: Strategy

"When in doubt, tenuki."

A simple statement and a proverb I've heard in many forms. There are a few justifications for this particular formulation:

  1. If you're doubtful about whether you can gain anything in the local situation, perhaps it is because your opponent simply is stronger in such situations; at any rate, your instinct is probably right. Why play another stone that might be gote when you can take the initiative (sente) to start elsewhere?
  2. If there have already been a couple of plays locally, and there's no obvious local response to the last move, chances are the biggest play is somewhere else on the board.
  3. If you don't think you need one more move locally to seal your opponent's fate, you may be right. Alternately, maybe all you really need is a ladder breaker. In that case, you can get away with playing it far away (at least for the time being). So why not do just that? By playing it further away, nearer to some other battle, you may well find a dual-purpose play, a great tesuji.

-- Karl Knechtel (~14k. Just trying to fill in a gap here.)

dnerra: I'd like to discuss this.


Bildstein: Actually, I tell myself "When absolutely sure, tenuki." But that's generally when I'm trying to figure out whether or not I need another move to secure life.

Other times, I follow the philosophy that even a local play can be tenuki: I forget about that area while I consider the whole board, I forget which was the last move, and then I make a move that happens to be in the same area as my opponents last move.


Also see: Tenuki is always an option


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