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You are totally right about that. With John F.'s help, we've been considering "pressuring" or "harassing", to take away the natural prospect of killing. That's how I think about "attack" these days. But even so, defending is often the more profitable option, as it leads to territory, while attacking more often leads to influence, which still needs to be converted.
Let me say three more or less inter-related things about this.
1. STATISTICS
I don't know the actual figures for use of "attack" and "invasion" in western go, but I do take notice of word usage and long experience tells me that these words dominate our discourse. It is quite different in oriental languages. They have a richer palette of relevant words. As I have said elsewhere, usage of words either influences how you think, or betrays how you think. As a result, I believe western go nd eastern go differ in some fundamental ways.
We are really talking about four eastern languages here. Modern Chinese go borrowed heavily from Japanese, and in the process they have neglected much of the terminology used in classical Chinese go. The terms used in old Chinese go are nowhere defined, and some must have different nuances anyway because of group tax. When working on my Museum of Go Theory project, I therefore compiled a corpus (ongoing) of the vocabulary in commentaries. The purpose was not so much to see which terms were commonest, although that is illuminating, but to see what contexts (i.e. with which other words) each term was used, so that I could deduce the various nuances.
Before going on to talk about these nuances, I'll just throw in some raw meat into the cages of the numbers guys
By far the commonest technical word in old Chinese commentaries is 'jin' which I render as 'applying pressure'. This currently has 511 entries. The term 'bi' (gentle pressure) has 108 entries. Extreme pressure, as in forcing moves, shows up 255 times via either 'zhi' or 'luode'. Various moves come under a nexus of surrounding moves (as in Huang Longshi's Five Sieges), and as an example we may mention 'zhao' with 52 mentions. Other examples would include feng (sealing in) and capping.
Compared with all these diverse terms, attack ('gong') comes up with a measly 179 mentions.
We can see a similar pattern with what I called encroachment ('qin'). This has 178 mentions in that form, but various types of encroachment such as peeps and reductions and pitch-ins which have their own terms have to be added to that. Actual invasions? 91. Go figure.
2. NUANCES
What I have deduced so far is that there is a definite range of words to do with attack, and they can be said to form a template for attack. In simplified form (I say more in Go Wisdom), the terms can be ranked as follows:
(i) You start by applying gentle pressure. This is 'bi', which is the same word as Japanese tsume. Unfortunately this term is misrepresented in English, and too many people think it means a kind of extension. The Go Almanac is not entirely inaccurate, calling it a move that approaches the opponent's position to stop it from expanding. It then gives essentially the same definition for tsumebiraki (where it is -biraki = hiraki that supplies the extension idea. In contrast, Japanese definitions of tsume tend to go with equating it to tsumeyoru, which means to press upon, draw near, close in upon etc - no mention of extensions. And such moves can be made in the centre of the board. I have mentioned before that Shusai was very fond of pointing out that weaker pros didn't play enough tsume moves. I think of it as gentle pressure, but you might like to think of it as moving your troops up to the front, or Stage 1 of a battle. A distinguishing feature of such moves (bi) is that the opponent is under pressure, but as it is not so great, he will have a wide variety of responses, which might even include tenuki. So, this is pressure without real control. But note another attribute: because you are (or should be) approaching the opponent from your own positions, you are also strengthening yourself, and so protecting yourself from collateral damage when the balloon does go up.
(ii) Ideally, you will continue preparation with other types of move such as call & response moves (zhaoying), which are centrally located moves that provide safe havens for groups that will later be mired in running fights. You may also send out 'ambush troops' - aji. Either way, once you feel strong enough to apply real pressure, you can switch to jin moves. A root meaning of this word is 'tight' and so you can perhaps think of it as tightening the noose. This phase tends to go on for a while, hence the large number of mentions, and a characteristic of it is that the range of replies by the opponent becomes much more restricted, though he does retain options. Another feature of this sort of play, which can turn into running fights, is that the profit rarely comes from killing groups (very few groups die in old Chinese go) but from two different ways of looking at territory. One is solidifying territory (most often in the corners) and the other is making boundary walls ('shou'; what the Japanese call yose). Boundary walls surround territory but it is not yet quite confirmed territory. Making boundary walls happens quite early in the game - far earlier than most western players think of yose. The Japanese think of this mainly as creating a thick endgame, but I find the old Chinese way of looking at it much clearer and, perhaps paradoxically, more nuanced.
(iii) Not a separate stage as such, but you will find as an attack proceeds that forcing moves can come into play. The main characteristic of such moves is that they apply so much pressure that the opponent really has only one way to answer. In other words, you have maximum control. But, to allude to a separate thread, control is not defined as mere sente. The wider idea of initiative (or Elom's meta-initiative) is always there. Having said that, one of the most interesting things about the commentaries by Xu Xingyou (who essentially put Huang Longshi's theories into written form) is that he starts using sente and gote quite a lot in the way we do. What is interesting about that is that it seems as if the Chinese have come to this whole initiative concept in an arsy-versy way compared to us. They began with meta-initiative (no doubt influenced in that by Sun Zi's
Art of War) and learned the value of the tactical side of things later, via Huang Longshi. We seem to have started with the tactical version, and many people appear not to have latrched onto the meta-initiative yet.
I stress that the above has been simplified, but I think there's food for thought there.
3. PRINCE HARRY
I first came across this thread last night, as I checked in briefly before settling down to read some more of Prince Harry's memoirs. Not a book I'd specially recommend, but it talks about many people and places that I came across in my work - e.g. royals, diplomats and press photographers. But the section I started reading about after checking into L19 was an area that I know very little about - the military. I found it fascinating (and I'm not talking about the bit where he tells us how many people he killed). It was the training for his job in Afghanistan. He was assigned as a Forward Air Controller (FAC). This involved directing a battle from an aerial view, using drones or helicopter flights. This was possible because the Taliban had no aeroplanes. Harry's job was to assess the situation on the ground - chiefly where the enemy was and what his weak points were. Then he had to guide various forces, either on land (troops or artillery) or in the air to hit those weak points.
In films (obviously made by numbers guys
) we usually see such scenes in terms of "heading 214.678 degrees, altitude 456.22" and such, but Harry said he was taught to do it using real words, and in hierarchical form, going from large to small. So, for example, he would guide in a bomber plane by saying "L-shaped wood" then "T-shaped dyke" then "silver barn". Then bombs away.
It struck me that this was a perfect way of looking at ago game when attacking. But I've never seen such a hierarchical approach to exploiting weak points in go commentaries. I don't know yet whether the idea really is transferable to go, but there's even more food for thought. (I've got food on the brain at the moment, as I'm getting ready to go to a Burns Day treat of haggis, neeps and tatties with whisky sauce.)
But if you can see go in alimentary terms, ponder also on this: Japanese tends mostly to talk about weak points in terms of thinness. It's a bit tiramisu-ey. Old Chinese very rarely uses the word 'thin', but does make very frequent mention of more concrete defects ('bing'). They appreciate nuts in their desserts.