Harassment - taking profit while attacking a weak group. The antidote to amashi.
BobMyers: With all due respect to Charles, can someone confirm this? I had thought this term had more of the flavor of leaning attack. That would also be consistent with its meaning in everyday Japanese, which is to lean, although it could also mean to come closer.
Bill: That's the definition given in the Go Players Almanac. :-)
BobMyers: One on-line reference I found appears to say this is related to the end-game. Is that true? Another reference used yoritsuki to refer to a specific move. Can someone provide an example of such a move? Also, elsewhere on SL I found a mention of yoritsuki as being characteristic of Kataoka 9-dan's style, but this seems odd--taking profit while attacking a weak group should be something all players would want to do, rather than being a particular style. If the correct meaning is indeed to take profit while attacking a weak group, can someone comment on how this relates to the everyday meaning? Is the connection simply that you approach your opponent's group but do so in a menacing fashion in order to take profit?
John F. Bob, three things may be confusing you. One is that the everyday meaning of yoritsuku is surely "approach" (which fits the go meanings). Another is that the definition above, while not strictly wrong, is inadequate enough to be misleading. The third is that the term is used in two ways in go.
The go usages are:
(1) said when the side that is behind plays patiently and tries to claw back bit by bit. To "hang on in there"!
(2) The one referenced above (where the grammar is ishi ni yoritsuku) which is to attack the opponent's weak points little by little. It's this last phrase (jirijiri) that's important.
The verb is also often seen in the passive, yoritsukareru. Either way it is not very common and not everyone accepts it as a technical go term. The apparent popularity of it in the west is entirely due to the fact that John Power likes the term and introduced it around 1992.
The inadequacy of the top definition may well be my fault, not Charles's. I used the following phrase in my Style Guide about Kataoka: "steady yoritsuki (using thickness to harrass enemy groups and so make profit); maybe too laid back." Shorthand is allowed there, I think, but it is dangerous if lifted as an extract.