I’m just a kyu player (7k correspondence only, so maybe rather 10k or something), but I’d think that extending from our weaker stone (or connecting it to another of our stones) would be better than playing atari b/c the latter would most probably create more weakness (= cutting opportunities for the opponent).
(This just straight outta my head without much thinking, I hope stronger players can teach us more.)
Most situations in which you can atari, you have a cutting point. So when you atari, you make your opponent stronger but you still have the cutting point and have to come back and defend. So usually, you should defend first, that way if they defend then you get sente. If they don’t defend, you can actually just capture later on instead of letting the stone run away.
Very well explained. I see this as an example of the advice that you should not attack the weak stone (i.e., you “force” your opponent to make it stronger).
You atari, your opponent extends, and now what? Can you still capture the stone, even after your opponent has saved it from the atari, or do you need to pull back and cover your own cutting point?
If you need to pull back and cover your own weakness, just fix it BEFORE playing the atari! Usually it’s really bad idea to force your opponent extending and getting stronger, if you can’t continue attacking it properly.
You can think about the cross-cut as the shortest possible ladder that doesn’t work. Why would you want to continue playing a ladder that doesn’t work?