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Joseki
    Keywords: Opening, Joseki, Go term

Joseki means 'settled stones' and is in general a sequence of moves which lead to what is normally considered as equal outcome for both players.

Ishida Yoshio in the foreword to Ishida's Joseki Dictionary says,

Joseki are model sequences in the corners and, sometimes, on the sides. Sequences consisting of rational moves and giving an equal or near equal result are recognized as joseki and thus become the possession of all Go players.
Joseki are born, not made. A sequence only becomes joseki when it is played in actual games, is subjected to opposition and is able to stand up to all criticism. A sequence which contains irrational or unnatural elements or which gives an inferior result for one side will hardly meet with universal approval.

Although most commonly used as a standard way of playing in a corner, there are also josekis for e.g. cutting loose connections on the side and similar.

Many Josekis exist, some of which are played very often, others only in special circumstances.

Here's a list of Joseki related pages currently here:

4-4 point Josekis (covered in Ishida volume 3):

3-4 point Josekis:

3-3 point Josekis (covered in Ishida volume 3):

3-5 point Josekis (covered in Ishida volume 2):

4-5 point Josekis (covered in Ishida volume 3):

General Joseki discussion:

There are also some which describe how not to play josekis. Call them anti-josekis if you want:

Joseki Questions:

References:

Kogo's Joseki Dictionary
Ishida's Joseki Dictionary

The [ext] Online Joseki Dictionary of Jan van der Steen is based on Ishida's Joseki Dictionary, and includes links to games where the joseki were used.

[ext] Kogo's Joseki Dictionary covers all basic joseki and secondary variations, common non-joseki plays, and many trick plays. It is packaged as a zipped SGF file, available by free subscription.

newbie question: What is the advantage of knowing a joseki? is it so that you can try to force the stones into a settled position while retaining sente? or is there another advantage?

Illume (25kyu): I suppose the major advantage is to recognize common continuations as early as possible. For example you might be in a position where you'd like to make life in the corner and connect two groups of stones. If you study similar positions you will know how easy or difficult it is to achieve both goals.

Scartol: Go is all about patterns. Recognizing life patters, death patterns, fuseki patterns, yose patterns. Once you are able to recognize patterns, you can consider their context in your games and adapt your play appropriately. Knowing how to use joseki is useful to me because it allows me to approach difficult situations (like the sansan invasion) without fear. I know there is a mutually beneficial way to resolve the situation, and we can proceed along the path until there's a chance to alter the pattern.

Andre Engels: Basically, learning joseki is a short-cut to playing the best moves. If you know the joseki, you can then see the outcome immediately, and then quickly go through the moves until a place where either the opponent plays something different, or you prefer to do something different. Joseki contain a lot of knowledge from many players, which certainly beats having to think things out every time by oneself - some joseki sequences contain tesuji that even a top player would have a hard time thinking out behind the board. Also, when you know how the joseki goes on, you know whether it will be good to play it in a certain situation.



This is a copy of the living page "Joseki" at Sensei's Library.
(C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.