Life In 19x19

I'm afraid I still don't think I understand what sabaki is, only perhaps what it is not.

But I was drawn to the use of the words "force" and "momentum". I think of these as revolving around weak points. It seems that the level of force is proportional to the value attached to nearby weak points (and dependent on how many moves it takes to profit). However, momentum implies direction persistence, a force that causes motion in some region of space, which then having moved, exerts a force in the same direction in another region. Of course, individual Go stones don't move, so to answer the question of what exactly is moving, I could call it "centre of mass of vital points", i.e. the options that W has to escape.

In this sense, perhaps W takes a hit when B punches, but doesn't have to block directly spending a move. Instead, W can dodge and avoid directly responding to the punch. By moving away from the punch, W crashes into B's formation above. Although B is quite solid, W is strong enough to poke a hole in it to allow another direction of escape, which is all W is asking for. We find that B punches W into their own shape, but this also gives themselves time to reinforce, making W heavier since W remains behind enemy lines without any extra eyes. Somehow, W swallows a floating component of the wall to get past it, perhaps this is why a dragon analogy is used.

I'm afraid I still don't think I understand what sabaki is,

I've written so much about this that I don't want to repeat myself again.

But the steps are:

1. You recognise you are in a bad situation where simple, obvious moves will not do.

2. You recognise also that the best you can achieve will be a temporary solution. You want respite.

3. You look for a clever, sneaky, roundabout, temporising way out (e.g. a tesuji, a sacrifice).

4. If you find it and the result is acceptable you have achieved sabaki, i.e. you have coped.

If 3 and 4 are not available to you, play elsewhere. When you are in a hole, stop digging.


There is no specific technical element to it, although of course certain techniques such as sacrifice may occur often, and certain tesujis tend to be prominent. But no element id required always to be there. It's like living. There are 1001 ways to live, but living does not require any specific move, trick or method.

If you need a permanent solution when you are in a bad way, i.e. you need to live, the equivalent Japanese term is shinogi, which may well use some of the same techniques as sabaki but the end result is what distinguishes the two terms. Sabaki and shinogi can often seem to be the same thing, but this difference between temporary and permanent is what I would regard as the crucial difference. Whether that difference matters to is, of course a matter of choice.

To be more explicit, I use 'cope' in real life when a solution I have found works for the time being, but I recognise I will probably have to do a proper job later. I have deferred my worries to the future. If I have a bad situation but I dig in (one of the meanings of shinogu is to endure) and as a result 'tide over' the situation (another meaning of shinogu), I probably don't have to worry about the future anymore.

In short, sabaki and shinogi are concepts, not techniques.

SAs to momentum, the image I like to use is Newton's balls. Make of that what you will