is a Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 term

Go terms

Players of the game of Go often use jargon to describe situations on the board and surrounding the game. Such technical terms are likely to be encountered in books and articles about Go in English as well as other languages. Many of these terms have been borrowed from Japanese, mostly when no short...

 in the game of Go

Go (board game)

Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...

 that refers to capturing a single stone, resulting in a diamond

Diamond (disambiguation)

Diamond is the hardest known natural material.Diamond, ♦ or ◊ may also refer to:*Diamond *Diamonds, a suit of cards*Alt codes, ♦, the character or symbol formed by using the Alt key in conjunction with the Number Pad...

 shape. The shape of the remaining capturing stones is considered to be very strong, due to its influence in all directions. A certain Go proverb

Go proverb

Go proverbs are traditional proverbs relating to the game of Go, generally used to help one find good moves in various situations during a game. They are generalisations and thus a particular proverb will have specific situations where it is not applicable. Knowing when a proverb is inapplicable is...

 says "A Ponnuki is worth 30 points".

Ponnuki move by Black 1

A diamond shape (4 stones touching the same empty spot) is considered a ponnuki only when constructed by capturing the middle stone.

Depending on the context (other stones on the board), a ponnuki may be strong and thick but inefficient (overconcentrated).

Etymology

The word ponnuki (ポン抜き) breaks up into pon and nuki, in which pon is supposedly the imaginary sound of a stone being captured, while nuki means "taking out" (noun).