At present I play as a 10-kyu. Whether I play white or black, I feel that I’m not very good at attacking. What sort of study should one do to become adept at attacking? I would be grateful for some advice. Consultation Two : Mr. Kusanagi Hello, Mr. Kusanagi. That’s a good question. There are two key elements in skilfully attacking your opponent’s groups. They are the objective and the means. The first thing is to be clear about the objective of your attack. If you just make a vague attack on a weak group and it escapes, then the attack will peter out and will not have been very meaningful. You should aim at expanding your own territory or your moyo while attacking or at setting up a double attack on another weak enemy group. It’s important to work out what your objective is before you attack. By the way, one point to be beware of: attacking with the objective of actually capturing an enemy group sounds good but is usually reckless. The next thing is the means for carrying out the attack. Here the important point is to exploit the weaknesses of the opponent’s groups. To achieve this, I recommend studying the vital points of shape and tesujis. The more knowledge you gain about vital points and tesujis, the more precisely you’ll be able to strike at the opponent’s weak points. The first thing is to decide on a definite objective for the attack; I think that doing this will make a big difference by itself. Please try to put these principles into practice in actual play.