Fuseki Study Concluded

So I thought I would simply start out by going over a few basic principles for getting through the fuseki even if you don't competely know what you're doing. First of all either enclose corners or prevent your opponent from doing so. Secondly, and this often gets overlooked, settle your stones. It is almost always better to take gote to make sure a group is safe because every weak group will cost you dearly in the middle game fighting. Often higher kyu players will litter the board with weak, floating stones and both will blithely ignore the opportunity to attack while bickering over endgame moves at the edge of the board. Secure your groups, identify weak points in your opponents formation and build up your own position. Finally pay attention to areas of the board that are wide open, simply putting a stone on the 3rd or 4th line around a star point on an empty area of the board may be the biggest point and will never hurt you.

Now that we've got that covered lets get back to our game. If you are just joining us this is Park Jieun 9p as black and Suzuki Ayumi 5p as white and the game is from Round 3 of the 8th International Female Cup in China, you can start at the beginning of the game if you want to get up to speed. When we were last with our plucky heroes they had just settled the situation in the lower right and black, taking sente, turned to rescue his stone in the top left. This is very important as another white move in this area will make it difficult for black to settle his stone. Diving into the corner with 25 is a simple and neat way to resolve the situation.

Once black jumps to 25 white presses at 26 and 28 to link his stones, connection is important, and build influence. Black secures the corner with 29 and white uses his wall to extend to 30. If white were to block to the right or 29 then black would be happy to take this point which would give her a good base to combat the influence from the white wall in the upper left. This extension doesn't give much territory yet as white's formation is still open at the bottom because of black 29, a jump underneath will erase a lot of territory and may be large enough to play in the early middle game depending on the situation.

Now we have two extensions, a black one down the right at 31 and the white two space extension at 32. Can you see how black's extension is much larger than the white? Not just because it is a three space extension but because of the formation made with the two black stones in the upper right. Because of the orientation of the two black stones they project power down the right side. Nevertheless white's extension is very large. Appreciating the power of these simple moves will greatly improve your game. Flashy moves and killing techniques might win you some games but at higher levels of play when your opponents will be experts at defense you will have to rely on your board judgement to gain small advantages.

Black takes time to secure territory on the bottom left with 33 and white decides to use 34 to build a moyo on the top. I think white was looking at this situation and felt like she was falling behind in the territorial balance. White has almost no sure territory, the formation on the right is open to invasion and the group on the bottom is only assured of getting four or five points. Black has secured three corners and the lower left and upper right are both large enclosures. White's only real asset in this game is her thickness in the upper left and the influence it projects.

Black jumps out to 35 to reinforce the corner formation and white jumps out to 36 in an attempt to reinforce the formation in the lower right. This brings us to the end of the fuseki and in order to see if we've learned anything let us analyze the position once again. As I just stated black has taken more and more solid territory without surrendering too much influence. The four black stones in the upper right project influence, the black group on the bottom right is nicely wedged between two thin white positions and the lower left is large and fairly secure. White is looking to use her strong outside position on the upper left to enclose a large center to make up for the territory but this is less than ideal. Typically it is better to use thickness to attack rather than surround territory but with the corners already settled and no weak black stones are on the board she doesn't have a lot of options.

The overall feeling is that the game at this point is favorable to black but where did white slip up? Next time I'll go over the whole game up to this point and we'll see if we can figure out where white mis stepped.