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An Interesting Point About Direction
Difficulty: Advanced
Keywords: Opening
At the London Open last weekend I got an interesting comment on one of my games from Seong-June Kim (6 dan). I was black and my opponent approached at 1. The comment was that this was in the wrong direction.
The natural development is for white to approach on the other side like this. All white's stones seem to be working well together here. BillSpight: The above is a bit unfair to Black. White has made one more play.
All Black's stones seem to be working well together here, as well.
Can black to anything about white's 'mistake'? Seong-June recommended this diagram. (sequence 1-a) This leads to the situation below.
Now black has a nice formation across the top and sente. Nothing earth-shattering, but I thought that this was interesting.
--Tim Hunt
I think that the line given makes the huge assumption that White would go into the 3-3 point in answer to the pincer. Not that that is so terrible, but the counter-pincer is also conceivable and there is also the ikken to consider (see also ChangingFusekiDogmas) How does that fact that White has approached high in the lower right affect this? --Simon Goss? The general idea is approaching from the open side. Kobayashi Satoru no less introduced the "wrong" approach move in nirensei v nirensei a few years back. Simon's point about other joseki (rather than 3-3 invasion) after the one point low pincer can be contrasted with a Michael Redmond remark in Go World about a closely related position, that "in practice you invade". --Charles Matthews Now there are plenty of other ways of playing, and no-one can say that they are better or worse than these. But what can be said, based on large numbers of games by expert players, is that these are very good formations to make with three stones. Furthermore, they aim to do various things in future. Similarly, there are other things that are known to be good. Playing first in an empty corner, making a shimari, approaching a 3-4 stone, extending from a shimari, pincering, ... And these moves also, mostly, have various aims. Hmm. I don't think I am doing a very good job of explaining this. One final attempt. The attitude I favour is
and an attitude I do not sympathise with is
Perhaps another key point is "Have a plan." Pieter Mioch says: do not have a plan. See ControversialStatements. Question: Given that one can not find the optimal opening move, is it a waste of time to aspire to find the optimal opening move? --Tim Hunt
What about this alternative from Ishida vol. 3? He gives it as a leisurely approach when W is reluctant to enter at the 3-3. In this position if B links up the upper side with a play around 'a', W gets the first play in the lower right ('b' perhaps?). Both the 3-3 points on the upper side are still open and W seems to be dictating the course of the game more than B despite choosing the 'leisurely' line. I think that B could put more pressure on W from further away in this case - with a 3-space pincer (7 in the diagram) for example. Jonathan Cano: I thought the recent (i.e. last 5 years) fashion was to play the joseki that begins with 4 at c. White gets center influence while black gets territory on top. White frequently follows up with an invasion at d.
DaveSigaty: In the case where B has a stone on the 4-4 point in the upper right this joseki doesn't work well. After the usual pushing match along the top, W 9 puts B on the spot by making miai of 'a' and 'b'. This joseki is usually played when W has the upper right 4-4 point rather than B. This is discussed in chapter 4 of Kajiwara's "The Direction of Play" (although in reference to the approach to a 3-4 stone in the upper left rather than 4-4). He played out the normal joseki(!) but blames himself quite a lot and actually spends 12 pages explaining what he should have done instead.
Therefore if W plays 1, she has to be prepared for B to choose something other than the usual pushing out along the top. Perhaps the most frightening possibility is the push and cut with 2 and 4. Although this is often thought of as an overplay it is certainly a possibility backed up by the marked B stone.
There are a lot of possible variations that will present opportunities for W to slip. A quiet line for both sides here would be for B to capture at 6 after W 3 followed by W connecting underneath with 4. But this would leave a white wall facing B's stone in the upper right. So instead B throws in 4 and after 7 suddenly plays 8. This makes miai of pulling out the ladder stone with 'a' in order to attack the three W stones in the center or playing atari at 'b' and 'd' then connecting at 'e' and chasing an even bigger lump of W stones while also building up a territory along the upper right.
BillSpight: It is true that the kakari from the top allows Black to make a DualPurposePlay combining a pincer and an extension. There are other possibilities than the 1-space pincer. I kind of like the 3-space pincer, myself. :-)
This is a copy of the living page "An Interesting Point About Direction" at Sensei's Library. (C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0. |