Life In 19x19

Sorry, go is not that simple

I find pretending to be slightly more naive/dumb than you are to be a useful tactic when crowd-sourcing.

Many thanks everyone! Your examples have quickly given me a better idea where and where not this "symmetry heuristic" may be of use.

Okay, lightvector, you win. I think that's the clearest and most hilarious example so far. :D

[ EDIT ] Related follow-up question: Assume it's your turn, and you have a weak group that can be killed by your opponent unless you save it by playing move M (or any move in the set M of saving moves ...

Ladder breakers! Yes, nice counterexample; thanks.

Now I'm thinking this is going to be very hard to describe in general purpose terms (without summing over a bunch special cases such as "ladder scenario X", "yose hane Y", etc)...

The move 'a' is bigger for white than for black

Thanks. That's an interesting case, and I definitely think that the interplay of sente and gote is key here. However, I'm not entirely convinced that move a is any smaller for black than it is for white. Not in general anyway. It think it would at ...

I think it's a generally agreed on rule of thumb to say that if a move is big (or small) for your opponent it is going to be big (or small) for you (assuming you still can play there when it's your turn, because he or she opts to play elsewhere), and vice versa.

But when is that NOT the case, if ...