Amarigatachi
Amarigatachi means "overstretched (or overwrought) shape". It results from a misfired attack, one where one player fails to benefit from an attack and ends up with defects in his position.
Example (borrowed from Killer of Go)
This is a corner pattern in which White attacks at the vital point of Black's shape, instead of extending along the left side.
White tries to trick Black into cutting at with his move
. Black however calmly cuts at
. White's attack has misfired and now she's left with two cutting points, a and b. This bad aji resulting from an overly aggressive line of play, is called amarigatachi.
Linguistics
Gatachi is a vocalized version of katachi, or shape. amari is one of those words difficult to translate, but it might mean "left over". That would be consistent with the idea that amarigatachi is inadequate shape left over after attacking.
Relationships with other terms
- Amarigatachi is a process resulting in thinness.
- Amarigatachi is related to korigatachi in an opposite manner.
- Amarigatachi is sometimes translated as overdeveloped
References
- According to Bob Terry's translation of Killer of Go, it would be equivalent to the chess term "exhaustion of possibilities".
- The concept is well illustrated in the first section of Chapter 2 of Attack and Defense, though James Davies didn't use the Japanese term there. The article on Huang Longshi at
http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/news/orient/go/history/longshi.html has an interesting comment, too.
John F. Amarigatachi doesn't really have anything to do with thinness or korigatachi, or leftovers. The amari refers to having overdone things, specifically here attacking too hard, usually starting with an overplay, and if the resulting attacker's shape looks solid or powerful or effective but actually has pernicious defects (the defender lives or escapes, of course), that is amarigatachi. Thinness implies open spaces - a typical amarigatachi shape is solid-looking. It is true that amarigatachi cannot be thickness (even if it was meant to be), but the opposite of the intended thickness is not thinness here but amarigatachi. Also, far from being the opposite of korigatachi, amarigatachi tends to end up as being effectively the same because the defects have to be patched up.
The way amarigatachi is usually used (e.g. as in amarigatachi ni sareru), there is more than a hint of a weaker player being gulled into making an overplay. You might say he has been has been amashi-ed.