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The Seventh Directive |
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"Kill the impertinent intruder!" This directive is very much subordinate to the previous six. It deals with how to handle invalid invasions by your opponent. Following the GCS directives concerned with maintenance and expansion of framework links automatically takes care of coping with the earlier dubious invasions. No attempt is made to kill invading stones unless weakening the framework links. In the earlier stages, capturing stones, just for the immediate profit, is a bad strategy. Invariably it allows your opponent some effective counterplay. Giving in to the temptation to kill the opponent's early stones without giving priority consideration to connectivity is usually associated with an inflexible attitude to territory. Following GCS allows the territory to form automatically towards the latter stages of the game. But towards the end of the game, your opponent having fallen behind on the board (doubtless having been outwitted by your accurate implementation of GCS), will often try to live where he should not be able to. At this stage there will, in all probability, be nothing more important to do than to punish the overplay. If you have come to the point of considering the seventh directive, your position on the board must, by definition, be strong. The secret now is to recognise the invasion for the overplay it is. Because of your strongly connected stones, initially all that you will need to do is limit the opponent's eye space. If you attack in a controlled manner, your opponent will be forced to play purely defensively and will not have time to expand into your territory. The key is to play stones that can be connected to friendly stones yet nevertheless severely limit the opponent's eye space. But a knowledge of nakade (eye shapes that can be reduced to one eye) is essential for the coup de grâce. This directive also applies to opponent stones, now "behind enemy lines", which could, with another opponent play, live. Before, there were more important strategic concerns to look after, but now is the time to kill! Of all the GCS directives, for novice players, due purely to psychological reasons, this one is perhaps the hardest to obey. Players habitually taking the black stones are conditioned to show caution in attacking white stones. They soon learn that in a fight they come off second best! But this is often because novice players make the fundamental mistake of attacking the opponent stones as a last resort, when their own stones are weak. If a novice has any ambition to become a strong player he or she must summon up the courage to try out the seventh directive when it is appropriate. ¨Coping with an invalid invasion |
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