Sealing the border

Here is a pretty common situation that I have repeatedly messed up. You are white, you want to claim some territory on the edge. What should your next move be?


What seems like the best move has a flaw. I tend to want to move right to the edge on H and seal the border. Black could easily respond with his own move to the edge on G. Now I tell my self "Mission complete! Border sealed!" and head off to another part of the board.


Black hits me with this (below). Ugh. No escape - adding a stone still leave the 2 stone group in atari. Dead, dead, dead. After falling for this for recently I started wondering, what is the right way to deal with this?


Not long after that, I was watching a game and saw this. I was confused and started thinking the player who did it must be a fool. It seemed like it gave away territory - I didn't like it. But it stuck in my mind. I was reviewing another game, where the player ended up using the move in the top diagrams, and the kibitzers were making fun of it and recommending the move below. So, finally the light bulb went off and I understood that this move is the right one on the side. It is efficient and has some hidden teeth of it's own.


If you play that, and black plays tenuki (Japanese for 'playing somewhere else') white can follow up with the below and threaten to expand the group out to F and beyond.