Mand Ms Brown

Part of: Kirk/WhatILearnedAtJaniceKimsWorkshop

The brown M & M

"I'm very confident in the opening" says Janice.  

"I'm very confident in the opening" says Janice. "I operate by one principle alone: the brown M&M."

xela: I would also be very confident in the above position. Black has already passed once! (Count the black and white stones.)

David Lee Roth, former lead singer for Van Halen, was always in some peril on tour. The stage could collapse if not set up properly. His idea was to ensure his crew were following the written procedures by inserting odd instructions about a bowl of M&M's with no brown ones. One the day of the performance, he would check the M&Ms and get outraged if there were any brown ones.

Janice suggested we consider "low stones" brown M&Ms. A low stone is one on the third line. Its main weakness is that it can be pressed down from the fifth line. A stone on the fourth line, by contrast, is not so easily pressed down since it can make a one-point jump securing adequate territory against the edge.

In the position on the board, black has the brown M&M. After , white is delighted to approach high and press black down along the now-worthless right side. Black will not make a lot of territory here. In Janice's experience, whoever makes the brown M&Ms will probably lose -- everything else being equal, of course.

xela: My first impression was that is not a bad move. Not great, but hardly a clear mistake. The real problem is , which should be at a or b instead. KataGo mostly agrees. It ranks and black c as almost equal best moves, perhaps preferring c by a fraction of a point (hard to tell for sure: it keeps flipping back and forth between the two with more playouts). For , it agrees that either a or b would be an improvement, but actually picks d as its top choice, with a slightly surprising continuation:

KataGo thinks Janice is overconfident?  

Here you are, (instead of the usual black a) is a different coloured M&M :-)

Moves 1 to 10  

White played a strange move at . This is a clear example of a brown M&M. It is low just like the stone in the lower right. This is a brown M&M because black can now push white into a low position.

xela: Again I'm thinking this is not actually bad, and the problem is with the followup. Nothing strange about W4! Well, by modern standards you'd take the empty corner instead. But apart from that, versus white a is not a big deal.

Moves 11 to 20  

White tries to elevate his position with . Black doesn't panic, because "some moves are their own punishment", and takes some cash while making a base to . White is staking a lot on developing the right side, but starting from the low marked stones hasn't helped.

xela: My impression again is that this doesn't look too bad! But isn't ideal: the AI revolution has taught us that finishing the corners is worth more than developing the sides early. Again I have partial agreement from KataGo. The final position has black 1 point ahead (compared to white shown as 1 point ahead on an empty board with 7.5 komi). But the difference between here and KataGo's first choice move of at is only a fraction of a point. The real problem, says KataGo, is that is too slow (and at a is just as bad). It disagrees with the joseki books: white should leave this shape unfinished and play at b (or at B0) instead, in which case the position is even.