Many Go games are decided in the middle game. It's important we understand how to attack our opponent, but never neglect defense.

In our games it can be really hard to strike the right balance, to find a move that doesn't put too much emphasis on a single stone, and allows us to change our strategy in just the right way. We're going to go over a few examples.

This pincer standard sequence actually shows up in Hikaru no Go! It's not too complicated but it will take us some time to get it down. Let's begin.

This pattern occurs after Black pincers White's approach move and then White jumps two spaces out. The pattern gets fairly complicated quickly, but lets have fun going over it.

This standard pattern takes up the entire side of the board, but it does come up a lot in any opening that has corner enclosures. This one is commonly seen and definitely worth studying.