Yup, I agree. If someone pulls manego on me I usually smile and see it as an opportunity to learn something.
But in a more subtle way an evenly matched game does have both opponents doing “exactly the same thing” in the opening. Both follow the same recipe—stake out one corner, possibly the remaining corner, then go for a corner approach to simultaneously sketch side territory. It’s just that the half-dozen or so possible corner moves each have a subtly different meaning, and so symmetry is usually broken quite rapidly.
Yup, I agree. If someone pulls manego on me I usually smile and see it as an opportunity to learn something.
But in a more subtle way an evenly matched game does have both opponents doing “exactly the same thing” in the opening. Both follow the same recipe—stake out one corner, possibly the remaining corner, then go for a corner approach to simultaneously sketch side territory. It’s just that the half-dozen or so possible corner moves each have a subtly different meaning, and so symmetry is usually broken quite rapidly.