Block Bodhi

Bodhi remembered that lesson in his bones, because he had once been that panicked beginner.

He told the younger students about it plainly. "When I was new, every pair of enemy stones looked like a knife. I'd race around the board dropping pieces onto every gap — this line, that line — feeling very busy and very safe. And I lost every game, slowly and completely, because I never built a single mill of my own. I stopped a dozen threats and captured nothing. Defense that never turns into offense is just a long, tidy way to lose."

The subtext, the older students understood, was not really about morris. It was about the difference between being busy and being effective — between reacting to every alarm and choosing which alarms were real.

The genuine skill, Bodhi taught, had three questions, asked in order, before you ever touched a piece.

First: can they actually close this mill on their next turn? Not eventually — this turn. A threat that needs two moves to arrive is not urgent; you have a free tempo to build while they set up. Second: would it hurt if they did? Some mills, even if closed, capture a piece you can spare, or a piece already safe inside a mill of your own. A closing mill that costs you nothing is not worth a defensive turn. Third, and only if the first two were yes: is the blocking point also useful to me? The best block is a piece that denies their line AND sits on one of your own almost-mills — a move that guards and builds in the same breath.

"Block the mill that can close now and would cost you something," Bodhi said, "on a point that also helps you. Let the phantoms go. Every turn you save from blocking a false threat is a turn you can spend closing a mill of your own."

The Elder tested him with a cruel little position: two enemy almost-mills, both real, both able to close next turn, and only one Bodhi could block.

Bodhi did not rush. He counted what each closing mill would take. The first would capture a spare piece sitting uselessly in a corner — a piece he'd been meaning to move anyway. The second would capture the keystone of his own swinging setup, the piece that made three of his lines work at once.

"I block the second," Bodhi said, sliding his stone onto the point the enemy needed. "The first mill closes — let it. It takes a piece I don't need. If I'd blocked the first and lost the keystone, I'd have saved a pebble and lost the machine."

"You let a mill close on purpose," the Elder observed.

"I let the cheap one close," Bodhi corrected. "That's not surrender. That's arithmetic. You can't block both, so you block the one that matters and you pay the small bill without flinching."