tchan001, see my KGS rated games (and the few Malkovich games).

Definitely, I agree with you. It's a very personal thing too. What helped me isn't necessarily the same concept that's going to help someone else. Nor is the specific thing that I picked up on the final thing to understand. Nor does everyone learn things in the same order.

I know it's really personal, which is why I wanted to chime in with my own thoughts on the matter. I remember when I was starting to learn Go, I was very confused by the height of extensions. I had literally zero understanding about why one would extend on the 3rd line versus the 4th. For me, all the talk about 4th line being for development, or favoring the center, these ideas were just too abstract to apply. Why not just put everything on the 4th line, I thought. The 4th line looks bigger. Bigger frameworks mean more territory. And why would you ever try to make a smaller territory when you could make a bigger one?

My first steps, before being able to understand anything about frameworks, were to understand that if you play this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . B . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

then you have to anticipate White may attack like so:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ The weakness of a 4th line extension
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . , . . . B . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . W . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

White's stone is placed a knight's move away, one line lower, and is ready to take away your territory.

if you make a third line extension then you prevent this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . B . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

however if you extend further to the 4th line, it's bad shape

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ The weakness of a 3d line extension
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . B . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

This is all I was trying to get at. I realize it's not the final word on high vs low moves, but for me, it was the start.

Thanks - but he has the same follow-up on the left too, both gote for black, and white ends up with much the same position. It looks more interesting than it is.


Nonetheless, I'm sure everyone would quite like a stronger player to come along and explain some of what the author had in mind. I've done the job to the best of my ability, and would be grateful if someone could come along and patch my answer together (or refute it entirely). I think we'd all learn from it.

@ EdLee - would you agree that breaking appreciation of the 3rd and 4th line down rank-by-rank is a little bit too much? Different people excel in different areas of the game.

@ Billywoods - I think we're approaching Cherryhill's question from different directions. The clever point made in OTME is that you can use the "add a second extension" principle in conjunction with the "finish high positions with low extensions" principle to figure out when a high, gote extension from the corner is appropriate, and when a low, sente extension is appropriate. I guess I have always taken it as a matter of faith that 6-4 and 6-3 are both legitimate extensions, and so it made perfect sense to me that these two principles provided a way to identify the one or the other as more appropriate. You seem to take the central question to be, "Given that 6-4 plus a side extension looks so much bigger on the board, how can 6-3 plus sente ever be equally efficient?" (I agree that this is a tough question to answer, but I think you could just as reasonably ask, "Given that sente is so important in the opening, how can 6-4 plus a side extension ever be justified?") Is that a fair way of stating the question you're trying to answer?

PS, to both - It's clear that (a) in the low position is no better than the corresponding move in the high position (B15), but is it even generally viable for B at all? It looks context-dependent to me. B needs a ladder, no? And even if the ladder works, W can still connect his stones and be happy with having undermined B's side position. B15, on the other hand, is just pure endgame profit.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ -----------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O O X . . . . . . . X O O 6 . . |
$$ | . . W , X X . . . X . . . X X 5 W . . |
$$ | . . . W . . . . . . . . . . 8 4 3 1 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 W 2 . |
$$ | . . B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X , . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

Yes, I think so.

On the one hand, white shouldn't consider the left area big because there's a low white stone there, so black shouldn't either, and it's good to take sente if there's something else big on the board. On the other hand, if white is playing here, white thinks the corner is the biggest area on the board; the 6-4 plus side extension does give black some extra points and an opportunity to expand into the centre later, which white doesn't really have, and will hopefully equal or outstrip whatever profit white made on the lower side; and it's fine for black to take gote if there's nothing else this big. The only reason the author can have had for saying this was outright a bad move (not depending on sente/gote), as far as I can see, is because of what I said earlier - an immediate fight would be good for white. But I'm very unsure.