Thunkd wrote:I've heard a few rules of thumb that seem helpful. For example, one was that you shouldn't jump more than n+1 spaces away from a wall of length n. Another was that you should continue a contact fight until your group has 5 liberties.
Is there a collection of these rules of thumbs? Or maybe everyone could post the ones that they know here.
Speaking of Bruce Wilcox, he has a formulation of the wall extension rule that I find easier to use in actual games:
You want to make a jump that is the height of the wall from the edge. Start counting over from the top stone of the wall. Remove one space for every defect in the wall on the third line or above. Specifically, a wall like this is confusing with the rule as it's usually known and as you quote it.
You might not be sure how far to extend. 'a' is probably the right point. If you follow the rule as you know it you might guess 'b', but that's a bit too far to do what you might expect it to do. If you think of it as two separate walls, you might want to do 'c', but that doesn't take in to account the thickness of the top three stones.
(yes, this is an artificial example):
$$B
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X . . c . a . b . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
- Click Here To Show Diagram Code
[go]$$B
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X . . c . a . b . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]
See, the idea is that if black invades behind 'a' (such as at 'c'), he may or may not be able to live, but either way you can enclose him and build up even more influence. You subtract a point for defects in the wall because the invader can use it as a forcing move to aid in escaping.
If you extend further, you allow invasions to probably escape. If you can gain profit on the other side, though, then you're really sketching out a grand moyo, so you're less concerned about whether an invasion in front of the wall can escape. The whole idea of the moyo is to invite an invasion so you can chase it around in profit. So it can still be a good move (or even the best move), but the tactics and expectations you have are different.
If you extend too close, you're overconcentrated.
...
This is Wilcox's 'books'. The contact fights one expands on the 5 liberties idea, explains why, gives some quizes to make sure you understand the idea, etc. The sector fights one talks about walls (and moyos and attacking weak groups). Both are about the size of a proper book (they're actually interactive books (ie: software)). The EZ-GO is an actual book which predates the other two, and is really a grand bible of all sorts of different ideas about go.
They're all aimed at players with no or limited reading ability, so he presents easily understood rules that are very easy to use in an actual game (eg: you could program a computer to use them, which was the idea originally). If you follow the rules you'll usually stay out of trouble. Supplemented with strong reading, they form the basis of proper play.
If you have the money, I'd recommend all three. They're very different from other books in content and style, so I wouldn't worry about whether it would overlap with an existing book in your library. And the rules help make most of the other go books on the market make sense (the chapter about 'the stones go walking' in 'Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go' only made sense after I had done Wilcox's 'Contact Fights').
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