@edlee
Fair enough assertion.

A follow up question. If you had two groups that were undoubtedly alive and your opponent cuts inbetween them. Would that still be broken shape?

Broken shape is not about the life-and-death status of the groups involved.
Also, a cut is not the same thing as a broken shape.

Ancient Go proverb: don't cut two live groups. So if your opponent cuts between two live groups,
his reason can not be to attack either one; it must be for other purposes.

You would still call it broken shape. Whether it's bad or not is another question. Certainly knowing that both of the separated groups are 100% alive removes a major concern, but there are others.

1. Are you really, truly 100% sure they're alive?
2. What about all the stones that are hanging off your two live groups - are they all completely connected after your shape is broken?
3. What about the enemy's groups - were they both completely alive? If he broke your shape he may have connected two groups that would have been cut otherwise, and might have been separately weak or dead.
4. When he breaks your shape, is he playing moves on dame or breaking into your territory? When you get enemy stones reducing your territory you can block, and when you have stones running around inside your territory you can kill, but when he breaks your shape, abandon all hope.
5. Did he create aji or cutting points in sente?

Follow-up:

Thank you both for the qualifiers. It is helping me to understand the broken shape concept. What had been confusing me was that it seemed as though if your fine with your opponent pushing through you can get at least a few free moves out of it which can be worth a good bit. It is bad then to create broken shape without realizing that will be the result, and while not great, it can be acceptable to consiously allow the shape to be broken if its not horrible locally and you can get something out of it.

Ignoring all of W extra moves
If W wants to push through. Both his groups are strong. And with two huge walls so close to each other. Neither side can make any territory out of a. Thereforing playing somewhere else instead of b would be good here?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ . . . . . . O . . . . O . . .
$$ . . . . . O . O . . O . O . .
$$ . . . . O O O O O O O O O O .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . a . . a . . . . . a . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . b . . . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X 1 X X X X . .
$$ . . . . X . X . O . X . X . .
$$ . . . X . X X . O . . X . X .
$$ . . . X X X . . O . . X X X .
$$ . . . . . . . . O . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . O O O O O . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . O . O . O . . . .[/go]

Just a point to see if my thinking is wrong: To me white's 1 there looks fairly pointless. Why cut two live groups? White's group on top is alive so it doesn't need to be connected etc.

You are correct, at least as I understand it. The discussion is on broken shape, and I think I created(well edited) a diagram where broken shape is inconsequential. That was the idea at least.

Yes. Continue to play, study, and review.

Boidhre,

True. I'm blind.

Just one note on some ambiguities in the concept of broken shape.

1. The shape that results from ignoring a peep at a basic jump.
2. The shape that cuts one player's groups of stones cleanly apart without similarly cutting his opponent's.

In the case of the keima these two conceptions lead to the same conclusion, but in the case of the one-space jump they lead to two slightly different conceptions of when the shape is broken. The first conception suggests that this is a broken shape:



The second conception suggests this is the broken shape:


A further point, however, is that whether a shape counts as broken depends on the local situation and what sort of connection B had between his stones. This might be obvious with the bamboo joint: compared to the one point jump, "peeping" the bamboo joint and then "pushing through" is useless and does not break the shape, although locally it looks the same as peeping and pushing through the one point jump. I bring this up because the huge number of stones surrounding W's peep in this example will affect our judgment of whether the shape is broken. An example more true to the spirit of the question might involve two strong groups connected over a distance by a series of 1-pt jumps.

Interesting, jts. That's some stuff for me to think about.

On a related note:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Dosaku (W) vs. Chitetsu (B)
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X X O O . |
$$ | . . O . O . . . . . . X . O O X O X . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . X O X X . X |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . O X . X . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . e . . . . . . . . . . O O . . . . |
$$ | . . X c . . . . . . . . . X O . O . . |
$$ | . . . a . . . . . . . . . . X X . X . |
$$ | . . . , . d . . . , . . . O X , . X . |
$$ | . 9 . . 8 5 b . . . . . . . X O O O . |
$$ | . 4 3 7 6 2 O . . . . O O . X O X O . |
$$ | . 0 X 1 . X . . O . O X . O X X X X . |
$$ | . . X O . . X . . O . . . . O . . . . |
$$ | . X O . . . . X X . X . O . O X X X . |
$$ | . X O O . O O O X , . X X X X O . O . |
$$ | . X X O X . O X O O X . . . X O . X O |
$$ | . X O O . . O X . . . . . O X O . O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Now, is a bad play since after the sequence to , White has a broken Keima between and ?
Furthermore: Black is forced to escape ("Squeezing Out the Toothpaste"?) while White is induced to defend a cut ("Thank-You"-move) and can both surround Black's lower left side group and attack Black's upper left side group with the sequence from 'a' to 'e' ("Make Territory while Attacking") while Black gets a Ponnuki in the center ("A Ponnuki is worth 30 points").

How to judge?

White won the game with 5 points. There was no Komi.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Exactly.

Thanks you SoDesuNe

I have made my first inroad into the single digit kyus. After winning this game I ranked up to 9k. I hope to not fall back to 10 kyu, and I have won a few games since then so that would hopefully be hard to do now. Any comments are appreciated, but I am posting this game more because it seems the kind of thing to put in my study journal. A milestone and all that.

Congrats on 9k!

Thank you Boidhre

Congrats Twitchy ...

We are trending in the same range. I'm up for playing if you ever see me online.

Cheers

I'm game egghead. I'll buddy you when I get home