EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: In the opening and in the middle game you should avoid a fight in a place where you're outnumbered. Instead you should try to fight in a place where you outnumber an opponent's stones.
Yet, many people invade an opponent’s moyo or territory first, which is unnecessarily. And then their invading stone gets attacked; they give an opponent’s a chance to get an advantage.
I understand that "grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." But you have to overcome this.
If you get Black, you always have one stone ahead. So in many cases it is White who has to invade first. If you are Black and make a moyo by making the three-star point opening or the Chinese opening, it is definitely White who has to invade. This means that Black will attack a white group.
If you have a chance to attack a weak group, you will have various opportunities to attain an ideal attack such as the following:
1. You attack a weak group while increasing your territory.
2. You attack a weak group while expanding your moyo.
3. You attack a weak group while erasing an opponent’s moyo.
4. You attack a weak group while reducing an opponent's territory.
5. You attack two or more than two weak groups at the same time by making a splitting attack. (I’ll elaborate on this below.)
As you can see 3. and 4., you should let an opponent invade, attack an invading stone, follow it, and then invade an opponent’s moyo. You usually follow a weak group and get an influence in the center, so your invasion becomes safer and easier.
If you invade first, you will get attacked and let an opponent invade your moyo or your territory more easily, and that’s not good.
So if you play Black, especially if you make a moyo, a person who has to invade is White, not Black.
In fact, even if you have White, this strategy works.
If you are White and make a moyo by making the three-star point opening or the Chinese opening, and if you keep expanding your moyo, most people as Black will invade your moyo because we all have “green-eyed monster” in our mind.
So if you see an opponent’s invasion, your strategy works. But that’s not enough.
The question is how to attack an opponent’s invading stone. If you attack incorrectly, then you will not attain an ideal attack above.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Before you attack, you should look at the entire board, find where you can make the most profit, and then consider which sequence of moves will lead you to an ideal attack.
As I have stated above, making profit can either make a bigger territory, expand your moyo, erase opponent’s moyo, or reduce an opponent's territory.
But you can also make a splitting attack (A splitting attack is attacking two or more of the opponent’s groups at the same time.)
An ideal splitting attack is to separate two group right before they are about to connect.
(This is why ‘Romeo-and-Juliet shape’ is really effective because they split two stones right in the middle, right before they are about to connect. If you haven’t received ‘Romeo-and-Juliet shape” yet, please ask Kaz to send problems in the near future.)
All ideal attacks are not easy to achieve. You will have to learn how to attack an weak group. But at least you will know that in many cases you don't have to invade frist and put yourself in danger first.
BTW, if you read this blog and follow my advice, and if a game didn’t go as well as I explained here, please you MUST tell me that. I’ll find out why your strategy didn’t work or where you made mistakes.
