Last time, I talked about how you need to play aggressively, even when you’re forced to defend.

Every defensive move must also build towards an offense.

We saw a few examples in the analysis of the Pat vs. Amanda game, but those were very specific situations. In this post, I’m going to show some situations I’ve seen in various games, as well as some completely constructed ones, and talk about general techniques for defensive play.

In the early game, assuming no terrible mistakes, White will either be working straight towards a road threat, or trying to dominate the center of the board. Black, meanwhile, will be doing damage control. Black needs a way to halt White’s relentless march towards victory.

Surrounding squares

Let’s say we have some fairly standard opening game, with White going for the center, and Black trying to surround him as much as possible. It might end up looking like so:

Then White makes a mistake, and plays b4 instead of e2.

Why is this a mistake? Because it allows Black to play e2, giving him influence over d3. A foot inside White’s door. This means that once Black is forced to capture, he might actually come out on top. If Black ever gets the chance to go d1+, he’ll have three pieces in a row, with a fourth waiting on b3. That’s quite the step up from pure damage control.

(Black can also just capture d2 right away, instead of playing e2 first, but this risks drawing his influence away from c3.)

If White doesn’t make a mistake like the one above, he will eventually make a road threat, and Black will have to disrupt it. Here’s an example of a game where that happened:

This game is from the ongoing tournament, with SkippyThePenguin playing White and dove_queen playing Black, and it brings us neatly to the next topic.

Disrupting road threats

Dove’s problem is that while she has tried to surround Skippy, there aren’t actually any squares that she can take, except for d2, which is unimportant at this point. What she can do in this situation is capture either b4 or c3, which are both vital to Skippy’s threats, and will at least force a hole in his road. And that’s exactly what you should be thinking about, when you’re trying to defend against a road threat – how can I get rid of it, not just for this move, but for the next as well?

Here’s a road threat (from a different game). In this game, Black has the advantage, because White made some mistakes earlier in the game. We’ll be looking at how White can turn the tables.

It’s White’s turn, and there’s exactly one move that will disrupt Black’s threat: c3<. Black recaptures from b2, which creates a nice big stack on b3. This seems bad for White, but a big stack can sometimes be a vulnerability – Black wants very badly to keep that stack, so White can scare him by playing his capstone on c3.

Black could still renew the threat by playing 2b3-, but this would allow White to get his capstone on top of a stack with two of his own pieces in it. In order to avoid giving White a much more powerful capstone, Black moves the entire stack one square down (5b3-).

A standing stone would have served some of the same purpose, of course. It wouldn’t have been nearly as intimidating, so Black might have allowed him to capture a stack on b3 with it. Regardless, the threat would have been gone for the time being. The center square is the perfect position for a capstone, though, so there’s no reason for White to limit himself to a standing stone.

Anyway, this allows White to fill the newly empty b3 with a new piece of his own. Black could recapture, but White would just retaliate with the capstone, so he doesn’t. Instead he builds close to the center square, so he can have a secondary road threat there.

Black wants to force White’s capstone away from the center with a road threat, then place his own flatstone there. However, as we’ll see, this trap has no real edge, and White does indeed walk confidently into it by making his own road threat:

Thanks to White’s capstone, Black is never actually able to make good on his threats. From here on out, White has the upper hand. He wins a few turns prematurely thanks to Black missing a dual threat, but Black did not have a comeback anyway.

In summary

When your opponent goes for the center, try to gain control of individual squares, to get a foothold.

Be on the lookout for squares you can gain control over even without capturing.

When your opponent has a road threat, make a hole in it, and take control of the freed-up squares.

Your capstone can be used to force a big stack to move away or split up.

Don’t play your capstone unless it’s in a position that will continue to be useful. Use a wall instead.

That’s all I’ve got for today – questions and comments are welcome below, and I’ll see you all in two weeks, if not before.