gowan wrote:White has a feeling of urgency and a feeling of being behind.
i want to take issue with this; you are 5D and i am 5K, so we are pretty much the same and can argue on even terms.
Throughout prehistory, White has always been behind Black - the first people were Black, and the first Britons were Black too.
It was maybe a mistake for Black to cross the tropics, because after he did so, his skin started to turn white, and then all the trouble started, but that's Another Story.
White shines brighter than Black, so Go stone makers make Black stones wider than White ones to compensate.
A long time ago, in a far-away place, some bloke came up with a thing called komi, which seems to me grossly unfair, since it puts Black at an immediate disadvantage.
So it's Black who has to catch up with White.
And what's more, i bet if you did the statistics, you would find that half the time White gets to put down the last stone, so it's 50-50 and thus irrelevant who puts down the first one... ok, yeah, that's wrong, because if Black puts down the last one as well as the first one he will have put down 1 more than White altogether so, as usual, i am talking out of my hat.
But if you don't point out my flawed basis, no-one will notice and i can press on with my argument that it doesn't matter who goes first, because sente doesn't start to happen until there are at least 4 stones on the board - and when it does, it's worth about 30 points on average in the hands of a pro, because that's how much you can lose by putting a foot wrong and falling in the water.
in the diagram below. I hardly have a preference. I would normally play any of a-con the 4-4 point of the diagonally opposite corner from
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makes a keima approach, just play the keima response. OC, you still have to decide how to play against sanrensei, the various Chinese and mini-Chinese positions, etc.
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