Your first move - part 3

The final one of our series on opening replies. How to play this 43 after your opponent has made their 2 point.

A very useful theme to guide you in the early game is knowing whether your opponent is creating a priming structure or a blitzing structure. Blitzing structures have lots of builders available in the outfield, stacked points that your opponent will want to unstack, and (probably) a fair few gaps. Your opponent is itching to hit you. Priming structures have more points made (the bar point and 5point in particular being important), with ideally fewer gaps. Your opponent will be less keen to give up those points in order to hit.

So your response is simple. If your opponent is threatening to prime you, you’re more motivated to split your back checkers to try and grab an advanced anchor while you can. If your opponent is threatening to blitz you then you probably don’t want to split - you’re just playing into their hands by giving them blots to attack.

In this position what is White doing? They are more in a blitzing structure than a priming structure - the 2pt won’t form part of a prime involving the 8pt so White will happily give up the 8pt to hit.

So - don’t split! 13/11 13/10 is the correct move here.