No-No Shapes

Warning: This post consists entirely of bad shapes. The persons involved in creating this post are highly trained professionals in this field. Do not try at home.



Througout my Go career I have seen many bad shapes that make me facepalm, over and over again. I have collected samples of common bad shapes and I will clarify their badness using picturesque explanations. My goal will have been achieved if you, dear reader, start facepaming more often than you ever had.


I'm sure you are familiar with

The Empty Triangle

The B2 Bomber

and The Angry Potato

Those are seemingly bad shapes which are, needless to say, indeed bad shapes.

However, I will be writing about stuff which involve hostile stones, like

The Futile Thrust (while giving them cool names)

(followed by a short explanation why it is bad) The exchange of B 1 for W 2 is a bad shape because all it does is improving the enemy's shape. It looks as though White had played two moves in a row.

Which would be these two:

(then I add a picture which shows what the shape looks like to me, which spares me a thousand words of explaining)
To me, the black shape looks rather like

Let's get started!

The Dissected Knight

Sadly, this is a very common shape. Sometimes it is simply the best move to create this shape. However, you need to accept the fact that one of your stones is going to face a harsh destiny of doom.

I see many people voluntarily do this to their poor stones, while being convinced that they are playing on both sides, which is very efficient (not):

Again, this simply looks like Black has played two moves in a row.

Hell, please treat your stones better! They do not deserve getting backstabbed like this by their comrades. A lot of tesuji are about paying a sacrifice to make your opponent play this shape!


Examples of variations of the Dissected Knight:

The Injured Elephant

The Injured and Insulted Elephant

The Galactic Doornail

(There is a joseki that features this one. We can conclude that the Knight is perfectly aware of their Dissection in this case.)

The Dissected Knight shape sort of reminds me of this:

You may argue that this is actually art.


The Masochistic Headbump

Imagine doing this to yourself

The Interstellar Banana

This looks like Black got three moves straight!

Something That Would Traumatise Little Kids

Believe it or not, I've seen this being allowed to happen more than once.

The Vengeance of Alcoholic Ignorance

W 1 is actually a good move... is what I would say if there wasn't a black stone already.

The last shape of this series shall be accompanied by a video.


to be continued

Twisted Logic

I recall a proverb that stated 'There lie bad moves next to tesuji'. However I cannot find it on sensei's collection of Go proverbs so you'll have to trust me it exists. It is not hard to imagine that the spots next to a move which is tesuji are inferior to the tesuji for a tesuji is per definitionem the smartest, coolest, whateverst move in its vicinity.

As some of you readers might know, I've been hospitalized since a while and this was one of the things I spent thoughts on as I have shitloads of time on hand to contemplate every possible flibbertigibbet.

So there I was, playing some on KGS, and this proverb randomly popped into my mind. 'Hmm', I thought, 'this proverb is pretty handy for finding bad moves.'
'How about', I concluded, 'I modify this proverb a little to look for good moves?'
And thus a proverb was rephrased: There lies tesuji next to bad move!

So whenever I am about to play a move I feel weird about, I would apply this and look for the hidden tesuji that may be adjacent to the move I want to play. In theory. In reality I keep forgetting it and play the bad move anyway.

So guys, please try out this fresh method for discovering tesujis in your games and tell me whether it works, thanks a bunch:)