As one learns the game of GO, very early on you’ll discover that the lore of the game includes proverbs: traditional advice about the game that past generations have turned into sayings to help you learn. I guess they’re a teaching tool, of sorts. Unfortunately for everyone involved, but especially beginner-level players, every GO proverb is wrong. Or, to put it another way, for every GO proverb there is an equal and opposite proverb. Or, an exception. Or multiple exceptions. To the point where you will find yourself wondering why the original proverb ever caught on in the first place.
Every GO proverb might as well be an English teacher trying to explain the “rule” that in spelling “i comes before e” “except after c”…or when preceded by “y, l or chx” or “when in the southern hemisphere, all vowels swirl to the left AND ‘marmite’ is considered ‘delicious’.”
Student: But teacher, is a “kiwi” a bird, a fruit, or a person?
Student #2: Or a shoe polish?
Teacher: Shut up.
For example, Chapter 2 of The Nihon Ki-in Handbook of Proverbs begins with this well-known gem: "Don't make empty triangles." For those of you don’t know, this is one of the most common examples of “bad” shape in the game, 3 stones of the same color that make a little L shape, with that fourth space empty. Any player stronger than yourself can tell you 10 good reasons to NOT make an Empty triangle, such as it is “obviously inefficient” (23). On the other hand, sometimes an empty triangle might also be the best move! For example, “Sometimes you just have to make one, it’s the only the move.” Wait—is the empty triangle the epitome of bad shape or the only move??? Or, is it only correct to make an empty triangle after c, or when spelling the word “believe”?
Are GO proverbs just word salad? Some kind of surreal poetry where words don’t mean anything? Are they the teachings of a wise shaman: “Make me one with an empty triangle?” Or, their pizza order?
I’ve long suspected that GO proverbs are only true if your opponent knows and believes them too. Like traffic rules, they only exist in an idealized world—in the real world, people do whatever they want. Like a driving instructor who in the classroom solemnly explains the importance of keeping your hands at 10 and 2, but then on his drive home has one hand at 7:42 a.m. and the other one swinging a chainsaw over-head like an extra in Mad Max Fury Road.
I had the ultimate insight into the effervescent and subjective nature of GO proverbs years and years ago, when as around a 10 kyu I bought the first GO book I ever owned: Strategic Concepts of Go by Yoshiaki Nagahara 5P. The book is broken up by topic, with chapters on things like aji and thickness. I had a life-changing epiphany while reading chapter 3, which is all about kikashi. This is basically the idea of a “forcing move,” or to put it another way, an offensive move that not only has to be answered but probably has to be answered in a certain way. These type of forcing moves have positive effects, such as creating aji, or making your opponent’s stones over-concentrated, or get you to say "kikashi". Because of this, it is ideal to try and resist such moves whenever you are on the receiving end. Without going into any further technical detail, in this chapter is a sentence that changed my life: “During the game of Go, there often occur moves which seem to be kikashi but are really not. However, if one answers such a move as if it really were kikashi then, in fact, that move becomes kikashi” (22). And that was the exact moment that I realized every GO proverb is wrong, and so is its opposite. Now back to figuring out what a “kiwi” is.
"Keep your stones connected," and "If you have lost all four corners then you have lost,"