I have what I think is a novel theory about why Magnus Carlsen is world chess champion. I see in chess blogs that among quite a large sector he is surprisingly unpopular, apparently because these people see him as achieving many of his wins by grinding down the opponent in long endgames - in other words, winning through stamina rather than chess technique. Looking at the ages and body shapes of his opponents, I think this is intrinsically unlikely, but anyway I suspect he is the best because he has brought something new to chess: he has discovered refinements in a stage of the game between the middle game and the endgame, which we might call either the pre-endgame or the macroendgame. In this phase, he has learnt to manoeuvre in such a way that he can eventually move from the middle game into the endgame on terms that are favourable to him. The advantage may be microscopic but part of his skill has been to bring an ultra-powerful microscope to the board.
I have next to no chess knowledge to back up that claim, but I make it with a little bit of confidence because I used to spend quite a bit of time in chess tournament pressrooms with the world's best players. There I used to toss out comments based on shogi terms for concepts that existed in chess but appeared to have no name there. For example, Karpov seems especially good at making "good shape". The chess players almost invariably agreed with me, and in fact when I remarked once that Bent Larsen seemed to be following the shogi proverb about pushing the edge pawns, someone told me that they were pretty sure Larsen had looked at shogi and got ideas from there.
In the case of Carlsen, however, I have based my view on go rather than shogi, and it just so happens that, digging out material for the Age of Takagawa in magazines of the 1950s, I came across the relevant series that had impressed me long ago. I have recently said that I regard this period as the golden age of go commentaries, but it was really a golden age of go tuition for amateurs in general. Quite a few concepts that haven't properly made it into the western canon can be found then. One I like is a series on teire moves - surprisingly profound and nothing to do with rulesets. I also like Kato Shin's ideas on "give the opponent what he wants", which is a horrifying concept to most amateurs but I was interested to note that it's also almost a mantra of Guo Juan's. But the one that sparked off my thoughts about Carlsen was "The transition from the large boundary-play stage to the small boundary-play stage" (or if you prefer, from the oyose to the koyose).
By Sugiuchi Masao (still alive and kicking today, as Dave Sigaty keeps reminding us, but then also a noted insei teacher), the series was subtitled "How to handle the common pasture".
I'm not really sure how well understood the concept of the "common" is in other countries, but the concept of common pasture was important in feudal times in England, and became even more important after the Enclosure Act of 1773 which set in train a huge privatisation of historic common land. Today, commons are relatively scarce but all the more prized for that. The mention of village commons tends to create a warm glow, and one of the most famous is the fictitious Nutwood Common in childhood stories about Rupert the Bear (
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nutwo ... B400%3B307), a favourite of mine. But even London has its commons, and T Mark lived next to Wandsworth Common, where he would sometimes wander and pick up an ice cream to relieve the drudgery of recording games.
The common exists in go, too. In Japanese it is called the magusaba. Our commons were usually used for sheep. The Japanese version was for horse fodder, but in go it refers to the vast no man's land in the centre that emerges after the fuseki or middle game. There there are pickings to be had, but of course you have to share them with someone else, and it is very difficult to assess how much you will actually get. This is when the oyose or large boundary plays start. Incidentally, Yi Ch'ang-ho's legendary "endgame" skill in yose is about this phase of the game, even though books with his name on them focus on the koyose, or small boundary plays - the endgame proper.
Sugiuchi starts his series with a nice example that just happens to include a splay of oyose techniques rattled off rat-a- tat-tat. He obviously discusses them in some detail, and gives more techniques, but as a taster I attach his first example game. If you want to get maximum benefit, I suggest you go to move 74 and then think about Black's next plays. There are then some comments in the file that pick out some of the techniques, but I will expand a little here.
First, Black 79 is a move that gives the lie to the contention that sente moves are worth nothing, simply because their value is not always about pure territory. As here, they are often about prophylaxis, but can be about other things. Second, the alternative shown for Black 79, at A, is probably quite appealing to amateurs as it looks much bigger, but this is called a "thin yose", which is one reason thinking of yose as endgame is a very, very bad idea. "Thin endgame" sounds daft and it's on move 79, for heaven's sake. "Thin boundary play", please.
As to when the boundary plays start, Sugiuchi gives six examples and they start on moves 75, 66, 98, 96, 51 and 106. As to how long the large bp phase lasts, in the present game it spanned 75-162, which obviously makes it a pretty big chunk of the game, especially when you consider that we have no English literature devoted yet to this huge phase.
Among the techniques discussed in other parts of the series, I'll mention a couple. One is that the proverb "urgent moves before big points", which is often regarded as just a fuseki proverb, still applies here. The other, and most interesting, is how to seal off large moyos. The essence is that you tend first to seal off the centre rather than the edges. This is to do with the fact that the centre is more open, more prone to ajification, and so you need to concentrate on thick plays. You grab as much of the hay from the common as you can, rather than worrying about rabbits stealing a couple of carrots from your kitchen garden. This will explain those many cases where hanetsugis are not tsugied, or where monkey jumps are allowed (and even ignored).
I'm not finished with my outlandish theories! Another one I have is that the faster time limits of today have impacted on the large bp phase most of all, and this has been to the detriment of Japanese players. They have traditionally spent a lot of time on this phase, but now have to rush it and so lose out. I think that this applies even to Yi Ch'ang-ho. I don't think it's entirely coincidence that his drop down the rankings has been paralleled by sharp reductions in time limits. He was nurtured in games with long time limts.
The reason the large bp phase takes time, of course, is something I haven't mentioned yet, and that's counting. The other techniques (prophylaxis, ajification, thickness, etc) tend to get priority, but at some point counting is needed to compare moves, but it's more difficult at this stage than in the small bp phase. De-iri counting is still used, but with subtle differences, essentially to do with the assumptions made about where boundaries lie - the more open nature of the common pasture demands a shift in emphasis.
Anyway, to the game, which is of interest in its own right. As you will see, weird fusekis are nothing new but in particular 25 of the first 40 moves are on the fourth line or higher, which clearly puts the emphasis on Nutwood Common - where you may discover an imp sleeping under a tree...
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John Fairbairn
, because it is a double sente, which, by definition, is a free lunch. 
