If yebellz just had stones at k16 and j14 which look like nice shape, capturing the g17 doesnāt reveal anything, and can be answered with an invisible Atari at j17 and I donāt know our follow up.
If anyone but me tries g17 we just self Atari the other two color stones. Similarly if red answers at e17 it would have to be Martin playing g17 capturing our other two stones and itās a bad result unlessā¦
We assume some position like the above and continue to go after the ponnuki stones, like
If the shape is any more solidly connected rather than loose we might just end up passing one of our moves to reveal some stones and then still self capturing our own stones giving back the eye space.
So something like this might be attackable this way
Our follow up is to have G17 been played by either blue or green in your example: that captures the yellow stone at G16, and fills up G17. With G17 ours, itās impossible for H17, G16 and F17 to all become eyes, instead only G17 can become a (two-spaced) eye. So we steal two eyes with this:
Suppose yebellz is trying to make something like this:
yebellz now has to recapture immediately, revealing to us the existence of E17 and / or J17. We captured one stone, yebellz places the exact same stone back where it was, so weāre in the same position as before, but have more information.
If yebellz does not recapture immediately, we play G17 ourself:
As for who should play what, I think our strongest plan is to capture this stone, and then next move be able to defend on the left side with yellow stones, and on the right side with green stones. That makes it best if I would be the one that possibly fills up G17, since my stones are not necessarily as valuable on the outside.
Hence, I suggest we play:
F17 G16 H17
since Iām a bit more worried of a stone being at J17 than at F17, it would be good to test that side in case there is no recapture.
If blue or green play g17 all of the blue/green stones are captured no? I donāt think thereās any priority rules for capture like in the diplomatic go game?
Ohā¦ Wellā¦ That makes this game an lot harder, I think, also less like Go. I disapprove of this rule, but itās a rule, so so be it
In that case, we still have a reasonable chance to get good information by capturing now, and unless both J17 and E17 are both already on the board, we can attempt to place G17 anyways: the two stones might have an outside liberty and thus survive.
If they donāt have an outside liberty, itās very likely that yebellz will want to play G17 immediately after we played our suicide stone, so it would not waste a turn for us either.
Yebellz captured G16 with their last move. This gave us a lot of information, namely that they have stones at G17, F16 and H16 (G15 is revealed anyway). Why would they do so? I believe it means that they want to turn G16 into an eye.
Therefore trying to destroy that eye seems valuable to me.
We get immediately recaptured, come back to this position, but with more information
We get partially recaptured, come back to almost this position, but we get to ruin another eye as well (e.g. H17 survives, we get to play J17).
We donāt get recaptured, yebellz plays an outside stone, but we get to commit suicide next turn and yebellz will have to play G17 to save their eyes, so in total we still get to play two stones on the outside and gain information.
We donāt get recaptured, yebellz plays an outside stone, but we get to play G17 and survive: this means we destroy the potential of 3 eyes to become only 1 eye, seems like the best result for us. If this happens, we may start doubting if these four stones are actually yebellzā main group, or if he has given up and moved somewhere else
Honestly thereās too many variations with the invisible stones for me to come up with a good plan.
The only plan I had was that two players play from the outside while one tries to collide with stones to reveal the group so we know what weāre up against.
If we want to go for capturing g17 Iām ok with it.
I suggest I play H17, then, shinuito F17, Martin G16.
If we donāt get captured, next turn I should attempt to play G17, since green and yellow are stronger on the outside. Or we get captured, and then we didnāt lose anything, really.
OK, so last move I suggested that I should play G17 now, which can be easily countered if yebellz has just played J17. I therefore suggest that instead shinuito plays G17. Perhaps we have managed to fool yebellz and is E17 still open.
Or we can let Martin take G17 while Shinuito and I try to capture H16 or F16
F17
G16
H17
