I was playing a game on Fox this morning (after watching the riveting Nigeria-Germany U17 women’s world cup match… man what a cliffhanger!!!). I came to the following position:
As a student of the Clossi approach to move selection, I clearly have a weak group and need to form a base, run away, make eyes or play my vital point.
forming a base is out of the question, so how to run away? In the game I played a slow gote ikken-tobi at ‘1’. In review of the game, I should’ve played an ogeima at ‘2’.
the ogeima move confused me for a long time…
I spent some time working out various things that White could play in response to the ogeima and was surprised to see that Black could maintain composure and integrity in response to White.
then it hit me: your main worry is about being cut
Once I realized my main fear was losing my group and when I also realized that I have been trained to play knights move as attacking moves and not running moves, I saw a way out of my phobia: I only needed to read the 2 places that the ogeima could be cut and once I see that neither cut works for White, then I can play the sente ogeima instead of the gote ikken tobi.