I think I’ve reached one of those “my brain has too much information and can’t utlize it properly”.
We’re supposed to play forcing moves first, right?
But on the other hand, we’re not supposed to eliminate all aji?
I realize the choice between the two has been confusing me lately in my games and it affects my overall view of the board, I would appreciate some guidance.
I believe “Forcing move” is often used referring to the japanese term “Kikashi”. But not every move that “is forcing” is Kikashi - only those that do not destroy Aji.
So a saying like “Play forcing moves first” that is possibly translated from japanese, may be missleading for this reason.
Generally one has to weigh the lost future potential against the possibility that the move will be useful.
My understanding was that a forcing move is eliminating an aji possibility by default, like if you threaten and get a response you can’t rethreaten the same thing.
I think I’m misunderstanding something here and that’s the root of my problem…
Timing is something of the highest difficulty. If you play a forcing move too early you lose choices, if you play too late your opponent may answer differently.
“Play forcing moves first” isn’t something I would follow in every situation, there should be some missing words about the situation involved.
That is right, so saying that there is “no Aji lost” is a simplification.
“This move is Kikashi” means it’s forcing, and the lost aji is insignificant (both of which are subjective judgements).
About forcing moves, it’s not easy to determine when to play them. Now there are misuse of them often afterwards, which is even more a common failure.
When you force and your opponent answers, your stone has made its job. Many times starting to try to save it at all cost, or to build a base from it is wrong. Mainly because it is not in the most efficient place to do something directly with it, too near some strength. And this is easier to correct at first as determining when is the right time to force.
There is a difference between sente moves and “kikashi” (usually translated as “forcing move”).
A kikashi is a “good” sente move that makes the opponent feel annoyed (for getting bad shape or something).
An example of a “bad” sente move is a “thank-you” move, where the opponent is happy to respond because from now on they don’t have to worry anymore about some defect in their shape.
An example stemming from this joseki:
At this point, a “bad” sente move for black is to push into white’s knight move like this:
Black gains very little from that sente exchange, while white is happy because black lost the opportunity of attaching at O17 instead, potentially leading to this situation:
White’s group is now cut in two pieces. This is still joseki, but white might be somewhat annoyed about their group getting split.
For me, the differences between a forcing move and a kikashi move are qualitative - based on the TYPE of effects that move has on the rest of the board state, and the possibilities for direction of play from that point forward
A forcing move can be as simple as a peep - OK, the opponent answered the peep, but what did you gain from it? Is the peeping stone down to 3 liberties now? Can it do anything useful at that spot on the board? Is it so far from any reinforcements that your opponent can chase it for shape or profit? Or can it become the beginning of an attacking group or at least a reduction?
On the other hand, a kikashi is something that fundamentally changes the state of the board - it changes the status of an area from “my opponent thought this area was loosely settled in their favor” to “with one move, this area has now become unsettled, and the opponent has to scramble to come up with an alternate plan”
The way I think of a kikashi - the move has to be sente, but it doesn’t need to be forcing the way a peep is forcing - i.e. requiring a single possible response. Rather than requiring a fixed tactical response, you are throwing a larger monkey wrench into your opponent’s strategic plan, and forcing them to re-evaluate their broad whole-board strategy from that point forward. Does that make more sense?
You’ll want to keep your options open and limit the options of your opponent. But often you can’t do both, so you have to decide what is more valuable.
If you atari a cutting stone from one side, you can’t atari it from the other side too.
If the atari on one side is significantly better, it’s good to play it, to take away your opponent’s option of playing there instead.
Otherwise it can be better to delay your decision, so you can keep the threat of playing either of them.
I heard once smt like: A forcing move that your opponent doesnt want to answer, but has to, is a good forcing move.
I try to follow this ‘proverb’.
Honestly IMHO kikashi and forcing move have exactly the same meaning, just one is in Japanese one in English. It is a neutral word, can be a good or bad move.
It refers to some very local move like a peep which induce a direct answer. (The connection for a peep)
While kikashi underlined the “forcing” aspect, like threat to disconnect, sente will be used to qualify the fact that you keep the initiative (in opposition with gote) in a way more global as kikashi.
So obviously these words may often refer to a same situation but with different emphasis.
It doesn’t matter if move is sente if it gives you very little. There may be gote move that gives you much more. Its better to play tiny sente moves in endgame. In fuseki and midgame its more important how huge move is than how forcing it is.
Sente move is more likely to be huge than gote move, but sente move is not always bigger than gote move.
No. That’s too broad as a rule/proverb. You might be confusing it with the proverb “play kikashi before defending”, but there’s 2 important differences there:
No, this is not a general rule. I’d even say the general rule is the opposite of that: you should delay playing forcing moves for as long as possible. One reason being …
And considering that forcing moves can serve as ko threats later on in the game, you should restrain yourself from playing forcing moves for no reason.
Also, forcing moves can be mutually exclusive:
In many cases atari is a thank-you-move, so better not do it unless it gives some clear advantage (like forcing them into bad shape, such as an emtpy triangle or a B2 bomber). Also see “bad atari”. When you don’t know yet which atari is best, better not play either of them, to avoid regret for having chosen the wrong one later on.
I’d say that cases where you should play forcing moves early are the exceptions to the general rule that I put in italics above. Examples of such exceptions:
“kikashi before defending”. While your opponent is attacking a group of yours, they are committed to defending all their attacking stones, including stones that are a potential burden for them once their attack is over. Once you finalised your defence, this is no longer the case and they can sacrifice such stones, so the opportunity would be lost. In that case you should force before finalising your defence.
“double sente”. You can’t really postpone cashing in such forcing moves, because then the opponent will cash in their sente and your opportunity would be lost.
Thwarting a big “reverse sente” move: At some point during the endgame, the point value of their reverse sente will exceed the point value of other gote endgame moves. It’s good timing to cash-in your sente right before it’s correct for them to play the reverse sente.
Indeed, that’s probably the favourite theme of 5p Catalin Taranu’s teaching: “avoid unnecessary moves”.
I think this Joseki gives some good examples to look at:
In this position, White can’t break through Blacks enclosure, so has to defend and live in the corner.
White exchanges 1 for 2 first, before defending with 3-5. This follows the principle of “Play Kikashi before defending”. Blacks has to connect with 2, and this move forms a rather inefficient shape with the stone below 2.
After moves 1-6, the Joseki finishes with 7-8. One might ask if White should first exchange A for B. This is an example of a forcing move that is not Kikashi, because it destroys potential. Specifically, if Black were to leave out defending at 8 (or nearby), then White can play at 8, and afterwards Blacks possibilities are very restricted, due to the possibility of White playing at C, threatening a Snapback.
What’s also important, is that White 2 is at Blacks cutting point, which is a good spot. On the other hand, a white stone at A would not serve such a purpose.
A joseki example about refraining from making “bad” atari:
From this …
… a common continuation is this:
Now, white could atari at Q14 to continue like this:
But white should realise that the Q14-P15 exchange was helping black. It would be better for white if they hadn’t done that, to get this result instead:
In this case white would atari at P15, giving black an empty triangle and splitting black’s group much more forcefully.
Now black should realise that the last diagram is bad for them, so after white 5 hane, they should simply connect:
That is a joseki result. There is still some aji left around P15, which white might get some benefit from later in the game.
Also note that black shouldn’t play the Q17 atari, because that would lose the aji of playing S15 or S16 instead. The normal continuation can be seen in the OJE, where neither player plays any atari.
Another “joseki” example, and then a comment afterward.
(Edited: it’s not really a joseki, so let’s say “joseki”)
I think this joseki is still not easy to quantify for me in terms of playing the forcing atari.
It’s a 3-4 high approach, one space low pincer.
Normally you play E3 and if they take the two stones then you play the atari.
I think if you don’t expect them to answer D7 then it’s much harder to imagine playing E3 first
Later there’s some kind of cut so you can play a reducing move
On the other hand if they capture then this reducing move isn’t as good because there’s an Atari and probably tigers mouth at A, as a nice way to aim to separate.
When you atari first, you can lose sente at the exchange of a some endgame in the corner. For example
But I think, in some board situations, like in this Sanrensei, it might be possible for white to think of things like
and if you want to prevent that and some other possible complications, trades, fighting, then maybe you can atari first and maybe lose like one point.
Morale of the story, timing forcing moves is hard.
I’m sure there was a saying about how kyu players lose because they play too many forcing moves and dan players lose because they didn’t exchange the forcing moves at the right timing. I don’t remember the exact wording.
I guess the general checklist is something like
I’m not sure if that is a proper example of this classic joseki, because white has an extra stone at C10. When there is some extra stone somewhere nearby, chances are that some joseki variations are affected.
Without that stone, I think white 1 would be an overplay:
And I think white’s corner dies.
With that white stone at C10 it might be possible for white to play 1? It’s a rather difficult question I’d say, but this is already a situation which you won’t find in joseki dictionaries.
On the other hand, I don’t think white should even choose this joseki variant when they already have a stone at C10, because it’s likely to become overconcentrated.
That’s a fair point, there’s lot of stages to choose different moves also.
If anything though, then this is a better example than the normal joseki of when to play a forcing move because white actually has options here 
So the extra stone makes it a nice example
