The Opening is about Creating Potential

[Bill Spight]

Besides, there are other ways of talking about the opening. I would have answered that the opening is about preparing for battle.

But basically Nick is right. The opening is about potential. The first play gains around 14 points. But points of what? Points of potential. Potential what? Potential territory or potential area, to mention the two main ways of scoring.

I like "preparing for battle" and I am puzzled how the rest of your post relates to it. How is the numbers approach going to help a player struggling to find a good opening move? Most people find it hard to do this in the endgame, but in the opening? Seriously: "Oh, I gained this 10% 100 point territory, great now the 25% 36 territory is the next move."

When I was starting out, most of my games followed this pattern. I would stake out a large moyo, my opponent would invade, I would attack. For me, preparing for battle was the same as increasing potential. Gradually I developed a thick style, which is another way of preparing for battle. It is also another way of increasing potential.

Some players, like Ishida "The Computer" Yoshio, take a numbers oriented approach to the opening. Others, less so. But how many pros do not make point estimates of the game in the opening?

[Loons]

Perhaps a thing is simple if you can describe it fully in several different ways without immediately knowing that you are describing the same thing.

[SmoothOper]

This is a pretty broad statement, but for some people there may be truth. Notable exceptions might be Cho Chikun, who is pretty well known for preferring to take his profit sooner than later.

[nacroxnicke]

Just play as if you were trying to get handicap stones by tenukying. If handicap works by putting you into advantage, so does trying to get advantage in form of star stones.

PD: Obviously this is not so simple, but I said it thinking on ddk players as advice. (please don't kill me )

And about players getting profit very early, I think it's because some people love doing shinogi or dodging attacks, as some people love attacking or cutting everything because they have influence, it's about styles of play.

Also I'm sure that pro's know a lot more about sabaki that we do, so they can make strong groups from nothing, that's why amashi is so successfull at a high-level play.

[leichtloeslich]

I randomly reread an article on Senseis and found the source of the quote I gave.

From Benjamin Teubner's guide to become strong:

Just recently Saijo Masataka 8p visited Hamburg, and while commenting on a game, he said: "In Fuseki and Middle Game, territory is not important, but strength and weakness of groups".

[Bantari]

I randomly reread an article on Senseis and found the source of the quote I gave.

From Benjamin Teubner's guide to become strong:

Just recently Saijo Masataka 8p visited Hamburg, and while commenting on a game, he said: "In Fuseki and Middle Game, territory is not important, but strength and weakness of groups".

Two things:

1.
"Potential" is not only potential territory. It is also potential to attack, potential to defend, and other kinds of potential. Which nicely ties up with the definition you provided now, in the sense that strength gives you potential to attack, for example.

2.
From your initial definition - "safety" is only a small subset of "strength and weakness" from the definition you quoted now, often not even a part of it. As I said above - "strength and weakness" have a *lot* to do with "potential". More than with "safety", I'd say.

So, I think that both the OP and Saijo Masataka are pretty close and on the mark, while you misunderstand both statements.