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Great Wall
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    Keywords: Opening

[Diagram]
The Big Wall

The Great Wall is an opening strategy invented[1] by Bruce Wilcox and is explained in his book Ezgo - oriental strategy in a nutshell. It is a kind of fuseki experiment. The idea is to build a big wall of stones stretching from one side to the other, defying all conventional opening strategy. Seemingly silly, it is remarkably effective. Two reasons: one is that if the opponent sticks with conventional opening moves, they turn out to be suboptimal. According to a professional player, White should prevent the wall from being perfected. The other is that your opponent will tend to underestimate you, because you play such "silly" moves.

Try this at home !

-- Dieter Verhofstadt (1k)



Bill Spight: How about an example of the suboptimality of a conventional opening move?

Dieter: Hehe. You got me there, Bill. I'm merely quoting Wilcox. I've just learned the word "suboptimal" and I was eager to use it. #:-7

Chess Whiz: I've been trying this opening a bit, and I think it's an interesting way to start a fight in the opening. After B9, just invade like crazy! :-)

Hu: A third reason for its effectiveness: Black often ends up with only one group.


Charles Matthews I doubt this opening was actually invented by Wilcox. I have seen references to its use by Marseille (?spelling - by the time it has been written in katakana and then romanised ...), an American player active in the 1950s.


A variation

[Diagram]
The Big Wall #2

In practice this variation seems very effective for Black, If White plays conventionally, any attacking moves made begin to create interesting positions for Black everywhere.



I've only seen it with 1 & 3 at (7,10) & (13,10) like this:

[Diagram]
19x19 diagram


BobMcGuigan:

I second Bill Spight's request for examples of sub-optimal moves. To me this "big wall" looks hard to use. If white closes corners Black will have a hard time making effective use of the wall. Also, the wall itself is thin, consisting entirely of large knight spaces between stones. I imagine it is a problem for a lot of white players because they aren't used to dealing with non-standard moves. If it were really so good I think there would be a lot more pros playing it.


Keenan Crane

I've had trouble defending against this attack (precisely because I'm not used to dealing with non-standard moves). What's a good strategy for white in this situation?


[1]

Kian Wilcox 22k* IGS

The term for the opening is "The Great Wall", I believe. Bruce did not invent it. If I remember correctly, he discovered it in a Go theory paper from the 1920s, but he is one of its few modern dan-level practitioners, and maybe the one who uses it most effectively/regularly, though I haven't even heard of higher level dans using the opening, so he may well win that one by default ;)

From what I understand of what he's told me, the wall is used to build side territory while at the same time keeping the opponent's groups separated. If the opponent attempts to attack the wall directly, reroute around the damage (generally using another large knight's move) rather than attempting to patch the puncture wound. This is one reason I believe the wall is kept so loose. Any tighter and it would become impossible to route around the damage, as the attacking stone would threaten the newly created link directly as well.

One reason he might be particularly fond of it is that if the opponent chooses to counter by trying to stop him from completing the wall in the first place, the entire game ends up being a giant center battle. Since Bruce is self-described as being better at mid game fighting than either opening or end-game, hoping to force a resign before the game reaches the latter stage, I imagine that responding the 'proper' way would be very much to his liking, though perhaps there is not much of a better option :)

I'm certainly not proficient enough in Go to really know either way, so take the entire preceding passage with a lot of salt. As for the desire for a more thorough explanation of 'sub-optimal' moves, I'll pass along your requests.



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