What is important here? And why?
The three-stone group marked below comprises half of black's stones. It's current direction of play is southward ( simply to maintain easy life ) but it's eventual direction is to attack east or west. It has no significant prospects for territory. It must attack.
$$c
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[go]$$c
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The prospects for attacking eastward are not good unless it gets stronger. That may happen when fighting with the white group to the west, like this:
$$Wc Black becoming stronger
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[go]$$Wc Black becoming stronger
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . 7 . . O 3 4 . . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]
This, BTW, is not a serious suggetion of Araban's likely play. It merely illustrates the general direction that the game could go. There will be fighting in the upper middle, and in some of it white may provoke black to connnect and become stronger and/or to run further southward.
$$Wc Black gets strong enough to attack eastward
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[go]$$Wc Black gets strong enough to attack eastward
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]
The whole point of these last two diagrams is to illustrate that black can attack to the east if his group gets stronger by tangling with the western group first.
So, if the marked black group's sole purpose is to attack, and attacking eastward depends on attacking westward first, then it is essential to black's game plan that white's group at N17/N15 remain weak. If it were to become strong and safe, then fully half of black's stones become almost worthless.
If those two stones must remain vulnerable, then black's stone at L17 must become strong. It must not die and it must not be bypassed.
$$c The really important stones: the marked white ones which must remain weak, and the marked black one which must become strong.
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[go]$$c The really important stones: the marked white ones which must remain weak, and the marked black one which must become strong.
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$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]
Once we have those priorities in mind, then it is easy to see the genreral area where black must play. The next black move must reinforce L17. Some obvious candidates are:
$$c
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[go]$$c
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]
The natural move 'a' is IMHO, not good here. It fulfills half the goal: it makes black stronger, but it then makes white stronger also.
$$c Black's target gets stronger
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[go]$$c Black's target gets stronger
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]
Black needs to make his L17 stone stronger while provoking a white response that is not strengthening the N17/N15 stones. Moves 'b' through 'e' do that.
...it's late...I'm going to stop here and post this much...I hope to finish this comment later...and post a video.