Shush up at the front! We can fork off to sidetracks in another thread,

but since you mention it, kafir is not an insult - its is an Arabic word meaning "unbeliever".

I, for one, am a happy atheist, happy to be called a kafir.

You are mixing up kafir with "kaffir", an Afrikaans word which had originally, in the mouths of God-fearing Dutch and Belgians, who had fled to their Promised Land of The Cape of Good Hope to escape the persecution of the Catholic Church, much as the Pilgrim Fathers fled Cornwall to escape the persecution of the English Church, also meant "unbeliever" - it only took on its racist overtones in later years, when waves of immigrants from further north started to unsettle the settlers.

Thanks. I was only aware of it as an alternate spelling for kaffir.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

So what are the go rules? It does matter.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

viewtopic.php?p=241524#p241524

update: here's a cleaner .sgf than the one i first posted, which contained lots of false trails i had laid in trying to get the picture to come out right.
upupdate: so far, we've had half a dozen dan answers, and only one kyu answer, so as the problem was set by its author for kyus as well as dans, please can some more kyus out there redress the current inbalance by sharing your thoughts?

and, please can we have no more dan answers until some more kyus have had a go at it, whereupon i will tell you the author's answer, and her reasons for it.

To encourage the kyus, i can tell you this much: so far, none of the dans have found the author's answer so you might beat them to it!

To give you a bit of help, here are two ginormous hints:

1. at this - or indeed, any, stage of the game, it is the overall situation that matters most; tactics should serve strategy.
2. the title of the thread is a massive clue - it's got something to do with shape,

and since all anyone talks about these days is what LZ says, it may be timely for beginners to do a tiny tiny bit of homework first on what shape means in Go - you don't have to read the whole book, just Google some of the words.

My first thought was the peep at L15 but if white pushes up the cut doesnt look that good. Still, it plays away from thickness and harasses the weakest group

(removed side note)

(Comments to Knotwilg's side note deleted, since they are off-topic. I hope other fellow kyu players will jump in and share their thoughts on the position.)

would anyone wishing to raise a side issue please be so kind as to do so in shape move fork, created especially for that purpose, so as to keep the focus of this thread purely and simply on black to play.

NO MORE DAN answers PLEASE, we already have enough of them to build the big picture - please let the kyus have their say now

Hi L19 , long time no see.
My kyu answer: N16, close to the W weakest group, maybe cut afterwards and get some points...

I like Uberdude's idea. But you insist on something else, and some kind of shape move at that... How about L8? If the insistence was not on "shape" I probably would have said P12 or P11. Also, I almost answered G6 cause of the shape caveat, but then I am just a patzer and that moves seems too slow to me.

when answering, please declare your rank, or at least whether you are kyu or dan, to help me assemble the big picture afterwards. i am going to assume that Bacchus was drunk when he said, as many drunks do, "i jus' lov yer, mate!"

and please please do not comment on others' answers, as that renders your own contribution ineligible for consideration as an independent opinion.

of course, once an opinion has been expressed, it inevitably at least indirectly colours everyone else's answer, but the damage has already been done, so we'll just have to make of it the best we can.

had i thought about my experiment more carefully, i would have insisted that higher ranks wait until lower ranks had a go at it, but it's too late now. never mind, at least the highest rank (the author) has been silent so far, so there is still something we can all learn from her.

once i have the raw data, and have done with it what i can, the door will be wide open for you to pat each other on the back, or stab each other in the eye, whichever takes your fancy.

For clarification, patzer = weak kyu.

2k: I went with the driving tesuji before reading other points of view, but to be honest that wasn't really a deep whole board decision. I just scanned the board, saw a tesuji, confirmed that it appeared to do useful things (help black move out, weaken white's 4 stones to the right) and figured it was likely enough to be the answer.

We now have 9 different move suggestions, from 7 people, so that's enough for me to be getting on with!

So door is now open for you to comment on each others comments and speculate to your heart's content, although i am going to try hard to ignore any further discussion, so as to concentrate on your first thoughts, which is the focus of my experiment.

attached is an updated .sgf; i put the variations in the order kyu before dan, even if the actual sequence of comment events was the other way round.please take a look and see if it correctly represents, anonymously, what you said and let me know of any corrections i should make (by way of a note here, not an update to the file, to make it easier for me to correct the sgf myself). the only thing i won't do is expand my precis of your comments, as i want to keep it as short and simple as possible, so, eg, things such as "i also looked at this, that and the other" won't be included in my analysis + synthesis with what the author says, which will take me some time to produce.

assuming passers-by have nothing better to do while i slave over a hot mouse, here is another ginormous hint:

empty triangles are heavy

i've decided to continue to conceal the identity of the author, so as to leave open the possibility of a followup experiment, but i can tell you that he is a famous player - so that should narrow it down a bit for the sleuths, and i am already suspicious that one of you may have secretly unmasked him....

On reflection, I'm less keen on my g14 answer because I think:
- white should probably tenuki g14 (maybe p10?), extending is just helping black with his driving plan
- it's not clear what white move in that area I am scared of: if f14 then g14 drive is still nice (particularly if black's tenuki was to weaken top right / right group), h15 gets j15.
- so although it's locally hot, hence my instinct, looking at the whole board something else related to the weak white groups might be more important.
- not easy to choose what, there's leaning ideas like q8, or maybe something vague around n13 as that's a nice shape for white from the 3 stones once we assume white gets n16 (though some reluctance to make that exchange as it gives black the choice to l18 for emergency connection to top left which is 'only' 98% alive).

good job i have 2 screens so i can have 2 L19's to read what i'm writing about; your reflections are a good illustration of why reading is necessary in Go, and hence why blitz games are probably kinda pointless.

i am going to be asking my Laizy what she thinks of all the answers, to help me get a perspective on them, but my Laizy is only a little girl who gets puffed out quickly, whereas i think you have a supercharged steam train LZ; so it might be interesting for the two Laizies to compare notes.

in the meantime, here is my little Laizy's answer as to what she thinks is black's best move (and i think it's a bloody cheek of Naxosoft to claim that the Barnsley Nightingale is "various artists"!)

It's black's turn. Didn't you forget to pass once?

me, forget?!.. i don't remember that i've ever forgotten anything...

Never mind, i will fix it later, just enjoy the wonderful Kate Rusby... no wait a sec, the stones look right, i must have made white pass at the end, and Lizzie left the last move marker on black - wait! - not Lizzie, cgoban! - oh boy, this Go thing is as fussy as Debian, no wonder i can't do it.... let me check again...

oh no!! i really really mucked it up, i put an extra black stone on the board at F12 where there shouldnt be one!!!

it wasn't a 2-stone game after all

oh gosh, that nullifies the whole thing! ...or does it? it does mean i led UD astray into thinking about f14 etc (sorry!), but it doesn't nullify the author's answer, so,,,

...so please can we see if we can rescue the situation, by starting again, this time with the finally final correct board position, which is this, which doesnt have the extra black stone. if i told you how many times i have uploaded a "correct" picture, looked at it again, and thought, no wait a minute, there should be a white stone at F16... deleted it, re-edited, reuploaded, redeleted, and on and on and on... no there shouldn't... yes there should, no there shouldnt, and finally, no there shouldnt! and while i was doing all that, going round and round in typo circles, wondering whether there was or wasnt a typo in the book, and finally deciding that there wasnt, you wouldnt believe me that i have been living in a hole in the road and our Dad made me and Kate eat hot gravel and work in mill for 73 hours a day, you wouldnt believe me! i have no idea what the game sequence was, nor even whether there ever was a game; i am starting to think it's a contrived problem, to make a point - but it's a jolly good point all the same, so worth pretending it's a real position from a real game

Here is what LZ157 thinks (I have no GPU so my computer is too slow to use 40-block networks).

Ah! The light dawns. The diagram is OK. It's just White to play, not Black.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Null and void, spindle and mutilate with extreme prejudice.