Below we share an article from the March & April 2024 edition of the European Go Journal - a chapter from our educational series "Path to 1-dan – Lessons with a Kyu Player". Enjoy!

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Artem: Matt Partridge 10k and Ian Polak-Kime 8k from our proofreading team continue studying go and making their steps towards 1-dan. This time we talked about one of the go-related proverbs and shared our discussion with you below.

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Dia. 1. Two stones sacrificed

Artem: This board position comes from a game played between Fan Tingyu 9p (Black) and Shin Jinseo 9p in the Chinese A League on the 22nd of January. Black 2 follows a proverb: add a second stone and sacrifice both.

Ian: Why would Black do so? Giving up two stones instead of one sounds like losing points!

Artem: I prepared diagrams 2 and 3 to explain this, let’s take a look.

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Artem: To count the difference in points between the two variants, I’ve played out the sente endgame moves for both sides. We don’t consider Black A in Dia. 3 after White 2 – it would be gote allowing White to play 3. Matt, can you count the marked territories, please? We can also imagine that Black A and White B are in place in Dia. 2.

Matt: I counted nine points for Black in Dia. 2 and nine for White; in Dia. 3, Black has seven points and White has eleven. This means that by adding a second stone to the sacrifice, Black actually saved four points!

Artem: That’s right. Let me show you two more examples illustrating this proverb.

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Dia. 4. Example II

Artem: I played this game as White against Andrii Kravets 1p in the 2019 European Professional Championship in Jena, Germany. After Black played the atari at 1, White 2 added a second stone to the sacrifice. Do you see why White did so?

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Dia. 5. Explanation

Ian: I think I know why White added a second stone to the sacrifice in this case. If White gives up only one stone as in this diagram, he doesn’t get to play A in sente and thus gains less influence towards the center compared to the actual game.

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Dia. 6. Example III

Artem: Exactly. Here is another, more complicated example. It’s taken from a game between Li Weiqing 9p (Black) and Li Qincheng 9p played last year in the 4th King of Kings tournament. After White cuts at 1, Black sacrifices the two stones on the right side with 2 and 4. It allows Black to play atari at 8, 10 and 14 in sente and Black 16 attacks the group on the top. White’s cutting sequence of A–B–C doesn’t work because of Black D.

Matt: Thank you for showing us these examples! I’ll do my best to apply this proverb in one of my games.