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MiaiInTheFuseki

 

Miai in the fuseki statistical analysis
Path: StatisticalAnalysis   · Prev: NirenseiVNirenseiStatistics   · Next: WidestPath1960To64
    Keywords: Opening

Moved from Miai in the fuseki

Dave Sigaty:

Update - When I wrote the section above I was basing it on materials in Otake Hideos Fuseki Theory which was published at the end of 1986. The final sentence turns out to be rather fateful since it seems the pros have meanwhile demonstrated that the left and right side (in the example at miai in the fuseki) are not miai!

Analyzing this variation using the program Kombilo and the game collection from the Go Games on Disk CD (January 2002 update) the following history of the variation can be charted:

  • First appearance November 1983 in the Honinbo League game between Takemiya (Black) and Takagi Shoichi.
  • Appeared a total of 65 times between 1983 and 1995.
  • In those games White played in the middle of the right side 42 times and won exactly half of the games.
  • White also played on the left side in 16 games but won only 25% of such games.
  • Various other moves were played 8 times with no special trend in results.

The variation does not appear in the collection at all in the period 1996-2000. It was played once in May 2001 but this appears to have been an isolated incident.

It appears from this that the white play on the right side was superior to the alternative choice on the left. However, once White played on the right, Black could not do better than equal results. Since it is Black that initiates this line, the disappearance from top level professional Go after 1995 seems to reflect Black's dissatisfaction with his results.

One last interesting point. The left and right were officially viewed as miai from the first (hence Otake's inclusion of it as an example of miai in a book for amateurs written in 1986!). However, the choices made between the left and right were not balanced in actual play. The professionals first concentrated on splitting the right side. The play on the left came later (because the right side failed to yield an advantage?). Of the 16 games where White played on the left, 14 were played in the 90's and 2 were played in 1995 shortly before the variation fell out of favor.



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This is a copy of the living page "Miai in the fuseki statistical analysis" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.