Humourless go proverbs

• Never attempt to take a move back without proper thought.
• The first line is the route to many life-and-death problems you'll never want to solve twice or meet in a game.
• Try to make your opponent's vital point somewhere within reach of your sleeve.
• The best kind of ladder-breaker is the one you talk your opponent into thinking really works.
• The best kind of ko threat to start another ko to play when your opponent is running short of time is the one for which counting the ko threats for the threatened ko will take longest.^[1]
• Strange things happen at the 18-1, 2-19 and 18-19 points. ^[2]
• For each positive integer {x, y} < 20, strange things happen at the x-y point. - Reflame
• Strange things happen even off the board, sometimes.
• There is always a chance your opponent will play tenuki.
• Ten points in reverse sente is usually worth as much as five points in gote.
• Play small points before non-urgent points.
• Play triple-sente points before double-sente points. - Reflame
• It is sometimes necessary to resign; but it is always possible to dispute your opponent's count of the game.
• There is death in the triple hane''.
• If you have a stone captured in a ladder, you should try to take it off the board as soon as possible.
• Never resign. ^[3]
• It's better to live in sente than to die in gote.
• Capturing a ponnuki is worth about 39 points. ^[4]

[1] Confused: Charles, in such a situation it also would be very efficient to have your opponent trying to digest this advice. The sentence is really mind-boggling.

[2] unkx80: These points are none other than 1-2 points taken from three different orientations. IMHO, this one can make it into the actual Go proverbs list, under the life and death section. One thing that comes to my mind is the descent tesuji.

Charles This is correctly (and humourlessly) pointed out. Well done!

unkx80: Indeed, strange things happen at the one two point.

[3] Charles Bill - not original:(. It appeared in a BGJ list of proverbs for 15 kyus (designed to keep them that way). I think 'Only resign after filling the last dame, but do so quickly so that the game cannot be counted' could replace?

[4] Details of the calculation:

• A ponnuki is worth thirty points when it is alive.
• When the ponnuki is captured, however, the owner of the ponnuki loses 4 points for the four dead stones that comprise the ponnuki. In addition, the opponent gets 5 points of territory underneath the ponnuki (one for each stone, plus the empty point in the middle).

That gives us a total of 39 points.

This fact can be made clearer with a diagram:

Two ponnukis  

Left: 30 points for White (per the proverb). Right: 9 points for Black. Hence the 39-point swing. Of course, if Black has to capture the ponnuki by literally taking them off the board (i.e. via a play a), then the swing is only 38 points.

Harpreet: Extremely dense person's question: Why does it say humourless? Is that supposed to be part of the humour?

Charles I don't know to what extent this is limited to Brits - but we traditionally find a certain kind of humourless, over-serious or pompous attitude both unforgiveable and very funny.

TJ Your list is incomplete without: "Never resign if you should have won". Applying this and "Never resign if your opponent is acting like an annoying git" have done wonders to help me maintain 16 kyu for some time now.

ilanpi If u are British, u have no humor -- humor has no u.

PatG I'm from Canada - humour has a "u" here too. Don't let your place of origin colour your perceptions.

Tas: Well I'd say that even american humor has a "u".