Here is a summary of Kim Sujun's opinion on the book position shown above, along with my own impressions when first looking at it. My framework is intuition and conscious thinking.
As a reminder, here is the position but now with the two options presented by Kim shown - A and B for Black.
As I've said, my initial impression of the position was that it was very odd. That intuition proved to be spot on. The whole-board position has never appeared in the GoGoD database. The lower-right quadrant has only appeared four times but in each case deep in the middle game with White strength to the left, making the three-stone White wall the last element in a surrounding tactic, not the building of thickness.
The bit I found odd was the White wall. It's hard to say whether it's thickness yet. It is peepable and, since it starts on the fourth line, it has no base. Rather than usual opening thickness, it resembles more the proto-thickness you get from erasing moves much deeper in the game. Black's area on the right is not territory yet - it's just a showcase for aji.
So, looking at B, it could be argued that it is sente, helping to firm up the right side and it prevents White from attaching at Q3, which could likewise be sente and would give White's wall a bit of a base. But my intuition told me pros just don't make those sorts of moves this early. The Black gain in the corner is outweighed by strengthening White over the whole board. My intuition proved to be right again.
Turning to A, I instantly assumed White would pincer it - intuition 100% right again, as it turned out.
But that left me with a choice of two moves I did not want to play. So I then switched to conscious reasoning. Part of that was assembling in my mind a group of factors likely to be relevant. I could easily rattle off concepts like sente, aji, pincers, thickness, as I have already done, and could add waffle about moyos, balance and a quite a few other things. I could even toss in stuff like what the Japanese call yakimochi moves - jealous or envious moves. In other words, I could look at the lower side and say, "Well, if I'm not going to get it, he sure as hell isn't either" and so I could play a disruptive move there. But at the same time I know that such moves lead to weak groups, weak groups require defensive moves that don't contribute to territory, and the biggest flaw in all amateur games is that they make far too many moves that don't contribute to territory. The upshot of all this conscious reasoning was that it didn't help. It just left me more confused.
The next step was conscious reasoning, too. What's this book about? Surrounding territory. Only B seems to do that, so B must be the answer. I chose it, but with great misgivings. It turned out conscious reasoning had let me down again.
Now it did occur to me (intuition again) that this problem may have been about
White surrounding territory, but conscious thought dispelled that - the book's full title is "The four basics in surrounding territory efficiently." I'm a trusting soul and couldn't see how that would properly fit with giving White territory. As it turned out: yet again, intuition 1 - conscious reasoning 0.
The sequence Kim had in mind was initially 1 to 14 the following diagram.
In that final position, Black can also look forward to the sequence starting with A (A now, note - not B). The result is that he has forced White to surround territory but in an overconcentrated and small way. Obviously you are meant to take from this that this is a good strategic weapon to add to your armoury. It is reinforced by looking at the alternative - defending the lower-right corner in sente, i.e. B in the original diagram, and then switching to A there - next diagram.
This is the only time when my intuition let me down a little. I had sloppily assumed, without any thought, that White would then pincer. Perhaps he still can, but Kim's move for White is then a submarine attack. I have to confess, though, that while intuition let me down, I'm not sure I would have come up with the submarine attack even after conscious thought. My intuitions that pros don't play second-line moves this early and that Black has too much room to settle himself might have proven too strong. Of course I also have the intuition that these Black stones can easily become yakimochi, or even mochikomi, but the weighting on that element of my intuition is noticeably lower.
The next position in the book is the one that results where White does pincer in the above diagram, so we do get to see why the pincer is not White's best option. Several continuations are shown but I'll give one just to satisfy curiosity.
My conclusion from this little exercise is that my intuition was almost perfect and my conscious reasoning (or gullibility, if you prefer) scored zero, both in evaluating the position and choosing the next move. Although I can list a very large number of potentially relevant strategic elements consciously, I believe that conscious thought is not likely to be useful in such positions in actual games. Its main use would be in study, where it would help bolster my intuition. Although I am exaggerating, I think it's reasonable, for amateurs at least, to say that actual play is about intuition + reading and study is about conscious thought + examples. The only problem with that formula, if you are like me, is that usually reading = 0.
I also concluded, incidentally, that Kim (or his ghost writer) is not the best go writer in the business, but I still think this is a fascinating and very useful book, though almost certainly requiring a good reading knowledge of Japanese (and, as you have seen, it certainly requires knowledge of the causative!).
By way of a little extra review, therefore, the book will enable you to choose the correct option in the following positions also, and enable you to understand why - and in terms of surrounding territory rather than fighting (VERY useful). No options are offered for the second example. Black to play in both.
My intuition tells me that amateurs which find these sorts of positions rather familiar
