Nordic Go Dojo

Kikashi and mochikomi

Kikashi, or good exchange

A long time ago, when I was starting to really understand the concept, I wrote a needlessly long-winded essay on kikashi on my old blog at gooften.net.

Not too long after my having published the essay, I heard one of my teacher’s other students ask her what ‘kikashi’ means in English, and she immediately responded with ‘good exchange’. This was akin to an epiphany to me, as I realised that my flailing attempt at trying to classify different types of kikashi, as in the linked article, failed in comparison to this simple interpretation of the core meaning of the term.

Mochikomi, or uncompensated sacrifice

Unlike kikashi, mochikomi does not have a very snappy English counterpart; but in exchange, it is also much less used as a concept. In fact, I imagine many readers are not even familiar with mochikomi as a go term.

Mochikomi literally means ‘carrying in’, but this does not give us a very good idea on what it means in go. Various Japanese go dictionaries explain it thus: ‘playing within the opponent’s area and getting captured, constituting an overall loss.’ Therefore, if one forcefully wanted to create an English counterpart for the term, ‘uncompensated sacrifice’ is probably one of the better options.

The above description and English translation have the problem that they depend on complex definitions: what is a player’s ‘area’ and what does ‘uncompensated’ exactly mean? Therefore, it can be better to forget about the concept of mochikomi altogether, and instead focus on whether one’s stones are working effectively enough.