Page:Smith - The game of go.djvu/89

Rh in this way it generally forces the adversary to fill up that "Me." It may be mentioned here also that when your adversary is trying to form "Me" in a disputed territory, the way to circumvent him is to play your stones on one of the four points he will obviously need to complete his "Me," and sometimes this is done before he has three of the necessary stones on the board. The term "Nozoku" is also applied to any stone which is played as a preliminary move in cutting the connection between two of the adversary's stones or groups of stones.

Sometimes a situation occurs as shown in Plate 13, Diagram. Here it is supposed to be White's move, and he must, of course, play at K 8, whereupon Black would play at K 7 ("Osaeru"), and White would have to play at L 8 ("Nobiru"), and so on until, if these moves were persisted in, the formation would streach in a zigzag line to the edge of the board. This situation is called "Shicho," which really means a "running attack." It results in the capture of the white stones when the edge of the board is reached, unless they happen to find a comrade posted on the line of retreat, for instance, at P 4, in which case they can be saved. Of course, between good players "Shicho" is never played out to the end, for they can at once see whether or not the stones will live, and often a stone placed seemingly at random in a distant part of the board is played partly with the object of supporting a retreating line should "Shicho" occur.

Plate 13, Diagram, shows a situation that often arises, in which the White player, by putting his stone at M 1 on the edge of the board, can join his two groups of stones. This is so because if Black plays at L 1 or N 1, white can