Watching some baduk tv english videos lately ive seen the pros comment a lot of times that "so and so is complicating the situation" and it is always the player who is behind, when they are trying to do some attack to catch up. I guess by complicating the situation it makes the result less clear, which is what the person who is behind wnats, whereas the other pro oftentimes plays the simplest or clearest move they say, which is because they are ahead.

Thinking about this I realize I think we amateurs tend to cause big fights and such, making the game unclear, which we shouldnt do unless we are behind. What do you think about this?

And I think the phrase "Pros don't play the strongest move, but the best move to win" comes down to this simplifying the game idea, where there might be better moves but they are more risky and the simplest moves are enough.

As a pro looses the number of ways to win become narrower. Like watching the recent election in the US for example. As states fell to Obama, the paths to victory became narrower for Romney and more complicated, after loosing Ohio, he had to win Wisconsin Iowa and Virginia, which is a complicated scenario, however if Romney had won Ohio then the results would have been much less clear, since there were many ways to win. Applying this to go a complicated situation is not necessarily an unclear situation. For example there are many complicated life and death situations where the outcome is known. Also I feel the results of fights are pretty easy to read out, since the fights tend to have a sequence of forcing moves.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?Shobute

I'm not sure I see the difference between Shobu te and a well timed invasion. Invasions and territory reductions are pretty standard fare for strategy.

When you're ahead and want to settle things down, would it be a good idea to play all your forcing moves at once before fortifying your territory? This would solidify both your positions and your opponent's and make it harder for either of you to cause mischief (which would suit you but not them). Or is it a better idea to keep some threats in reserve?

@TheBigH

Not really. If you have good sente then sure, but arbitrarily forcing where you can force may strengthen your opponent too much and actually become risky. Or at least, lose ko threats.

Also: I wanted to second the opinion that invasions are not necessarily dangerous, and a well timed invasion may be the most secure move.

Back to the topic of shobute, I was watching commentary of the meijin match.



The professional commentator at move 110 predicted move 111 and said this in the commentary

"勝負手で切るよりなさそうです"

There doesn't seem to be a better move than cutting with a "shobute"