Thanks! Yes, I'm still unsure about how much you can stray from playing tightly connected. I mentioned this in another thread, but I think part of the problem is that the small board is too small. Even though it's 9x9 stones in dimensions, you can "span" the board with only 6 or 7 stones due to the way connectivity works. I think this makes it a bit too hard to play disconnected, but watching some games from stronger players, I think they play less tight and still find a way to win, so idk.

The bigger board sizes definitely feel different to me, but I haven't played enough games yet to really know for sure. I'm interested in watching the meta develop. Maybe it will turn out that there really is a dominant strategy and the game is not as deep as Go, but I don't think I've seen enough to start thinking that yet.

The discord is pretty active and people discuss strategy a lot if you're interested. Regardless, thanks for playing! https://discord.gg/4ren7UAFeb