Don't crawl too much on the 2nd line, they said

Normal Go teachers:
“You shouldn’t crawl too much on the 2nd line, especially in the early game.”

Meanwhile Korea No. 2 and World No. 5 Byun Sangil 9P:

Full kifu here:

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Pre-AG pros: don’t crawl on the second line
AI: hold my beer

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I assume the idea in this game is that black wants to capture the corner but doesn’t want to add a move inside and give white a turn on the outside and maybe some other sente move.

After about 7 stones on the second line black is alive and white has kind of an L shape in the corner.

So it seems like there’s a purpose than just making bad exchanges

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There is the aji of the 2 stones in the middle of the wall to consider. That wall is not perfect

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Does black push on the bottom to be able to answer the peep at 2-4 with 3-3?

Black can answer the peep 2-4 with 2-5 and then has 7 stones on the second line so is alive. White’s group in the corner is a dead L-group.

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Oh, true, it’s L+1 in gote. White would need 2-4 and 3-3 in sente to live. Thanks.

Long gone are the days when the 2nd line was called the line of defeat:

From Samsung Cup 2023 finals Ding Hao (B) VS Xie Erhao (w) deciding game.
As always, crawl on the 2nd line at your own risk!

Full kifu here:

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I stall all your points + I don’t care your influence, I am ready for it.

Still quite unusual, i must say

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To understand why influence is useless you have to be either better than 8p or worse than 3k. So no chance for you I fear! :wink:

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Sure, that’s precisely what makes that game interesting. Will check my 20k intuition into the 9p kifu.

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White tenukied once to get Q10. In exchange, White had to crawl and give Black the wall J16-E17. A third line wall doesn’t exert a lot of influence, and moreover the wall is not perfect, White had a free atari at J15 which proved useful later. But still, the invasion E12 was scary.

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Yeah the atari played a big role in deciding that white was still okay in this situation. But it still takes a lot of courage to play like this lol