Focal point

    Keywords: Strategy

Chinese: 焦点 (jiao1 dian3)
Japanese: 模様の焦点 (moyo no shuten), 模様の接点 (moyo no setten)
Korean:

The largest point is at the boundary of your moyo and the opponent's moyo

Points of this type are often called focal points.[1] The idea is that on the boundary of Black's framework and White's framework, a play by Black will improve Black's framework and at the same time reduce or threaten White's framework.

Therefore these points are big because they are double-purpose plays. They are often played in the opening as secondary big points (and are frequently the solution to whole-board problems with quiet positions).


See Strong Groups for an example and discussion.


[Diagram]

Go Seigen - Inoue Kohei



Game played 1927-11-25: Go Seigen as Black played at 1 in reply to the marked white stone blocking off the side. This is considered both excellent timing, and a clear-sighted focal play (Black has no need to invade on the right).

Quite a move for a thirteen-year-old to come up with. Go Seigen was still in China at the time.


[1] Comment: That seems strange to me. There is nothing focal about such points. They are not at any focus, but at the frontier between moyos. I would call them frontier points or boundary points.
-- Bill

Charles Actually, as I now realise, such parts of the board should have many sector lines converging on them; in that sense they are focal or nodal.

Bill: (Much later.) I have found a term I like better, contact point (of two moyo).


See also:


This is a copy of the living page "Focal point" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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