Sebastian: Re: Proverbs and sayings... (2011-06-09 19:36) [#8597]

Thanks, that's charming, and certainly proverbesque!

However, the "cage" may mislead people to think it means that it's the limited space around that matters, rather than the liberties of your jumping base. Incidentally, just yesterday I experienced a great example for this distinction, where there was a lot of space around, but not enough liberties at the jump base. Since this was an over the table game[1], and I'm not able to recollect my games move by move, I unfortunately have to describe it from memory.

White (that's me me) had the opportunity to monkey jump from a jump base that wasn't alive by itself; it was separated from an alive white group by 4 black stones that had 3 liberties, while the jumping base had 5. Since it was in a handicap game I felt I needed to push my luck, and since the situation was hard to read out, I thought I'd risk ignoring my pro-proverb. But my opponent heeded it and caught my bluff. If I connected the monkey (I mean the stone on the first line) to the jump base, I would have reduced the latter's liberties, so that his 4 stones would win a capturing race.

It ended up pretty dramatic; the repercussions stretched from one corner to the other. The original jump was at the middle of the northern edge. The monkey grew a long tail; I ran on the first line all the way to the NE corner, just to get the extra liberty there from Black's shortage of liberties.

Somehow, instead of the combined reduction of liberties of base and monkey, we ended up with an oiotoshi. Thus, Black did catch the monkey with its tail, but the base survived. Since the monkey tail was in what would have been black territory anyway, it was no big loss for White.[2] But while Black killed the tail, White got around the 4 black stones to the other side, strengthening the white stones that had separated them from Black's NW corner group, which allowed White to eventually kill it. To put it in another proverbesque form: When a monkey jumps, watch out for the recoil! (But I'm not claiming that this should be anything like a proverb, since it only happened once to me so far. The appropriate proverb, of course, would be "Make noise in the NE, strike in the NW.")

^[1] How do you say for non-online? "Offline" still sounds like it's on a computer.

^[2] To be exact: The monkey jumped right back, capturing the capturer in a double purpose move: (1) a silly gesture of revenge (2) gaining White one liberty. But Black blocked that move right away, so that White kept sente.