Got into a situation very early (move 5) in a game yesterday:
My general heuristic for responding to the low pincer here when W has a stone in the lower-left, I attach at 3-3, otherwise I consider the splitting move at 2-5. In any case, this game the lower-right was W on the star point, so I proceed to attach, and it's pretty much W's choice to play this out:
At this point, B has played second in the corner, has maybe 10 points there, but W has development on both sides.
Here's the follow-up from the game. W descended
, and I decided that the descent was not sente against the corner (which may or may not be correct) so I elected to run out my cutting stones. This may not be such a good decision, though, because it gives W the opportunity to settle his developments on both sides. In particular, I felt as soon as 
and 
were played, the cutting stones lost their meaning as W is unlikely to be pressured on either side, so I played a fairly large jump with 
, figuring I would eventually sacrifice the original stones and would become a reduction.I can't help but feel that
were too passive. Or perhaps I should force the sacrifice in the first place by playing at directly. Can anyone give me advice on how to handle this?
exchange is more helpful to white than black, but I don't know what's best.
. That also makes the marked descent sente against the corner, hence playing the crawl and atari before extending comes from the logic of playing double-sente moves before W has the opportunity.
, giving up sente but taking the corner with one side unsealed.
at 6, sacrificing the corner that way, looks OK, too.