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High-concept opening myth
Path: Harmony   · Prev: AZenWayToJoseki   · Next: EquityAndSoundness
    Keywords: Opening

Charles Matthews: I'll admit to becoming in a minor way distraught, once in a while, at the prevalence of sanrensei and Chinese fuseki talk when it comes to opening theory discussion. This can be both a matter of taste - I don't play either type of opening myself at all frequently - and slightly irrational on my part.

I call these 'high-concept' openings by analogy with the Hollywood 'high-concept' film, where the plot has to be easily understood by a seven-year-old. So the first comment I have is that 'go isn't like that'.[1]

To qualify that a little: you can't win simply by playing on one side of the board. A fifty-point side isn't enough to win. No, really, it isn't: you may think that playing five stones on one side and taking 57 points is great, but your positional judgement is then wrong.

A somewhat more sophisticated version of the same story is that these are omoyo strategies. Black sets out to expand from one side of the board into such a large-scale framework that White cannot cope.

This way of looking at it has more substance. If Black and White play for competing frameworks, Black has the advantage because Black starts, That's undeniable. White has komi, though. Therefore in a sense Black must play on a larger scale than White, if the board is simply dividing into two huge competing areas. Relying on one framework is called ippoji and it's wrong-headed. No, really, you may be reading this and thinking 'the man has never heard of Takemiya'. There's only one Takemiya - accept no substitutes. I have met Takemiya and the man is talented. J.S. Bach didn't need to read books on harmony,[2] Takemiya doesn't need to be told that a large-scale strategy isn't a robust plan unless it has something innately a bit special about it.

A third aspect is that one can standardise one's opening strategy to 'I always play the High Chinese', and leave it at that. Whatever the competitive advantages (and they rely in part on the opponent's ignorance) this is a dull thing to do to one's go. There are a huge number of interesting openings to think about, and one virtue of SL is that here we begin to look at many aspects of them in a discursive way. My experience, sadly, is that this discourse gets blocked up if, for example in the case of nirensei, people say 'how do you play against sanrensei?' as if it were the key question. If I could get their attention for long enough, I'd like to answer along the lines of:

  • You do realise that White can choose a formation that makes sanrensei by Black not a great opening?
  • You do realise that the techniques for playing inside a sanrensei framework are really just 'normal middlegame joseki'?
  • Aren't you glad when your opponent plays an ippoji strategy that is more intimidating than sound?

It's perfectly true that some players will make a sanrensei or Chinese formation out of obstinacy even when it's not a perfect choice, by pro standards. It's quite true that, last time I looked at the Go Teaching Ladder games, a high proportion did adopt one of the said openings; and opening books in English don't cover so much else. In a martial art, it seems to me, this all would be assuming that there isn't a way to side-step a well-telegraphed and very committal attack. I find that hard to believe. As I said before, my feeling for go is that it isn't like that.


[1] Bill: Mild dissenting comment. In reading some of Go Seigen's recent books, I have been struck by how often he appeals to the idea of Black's playing in a way that is easy to understand. If it were anybody but Go Seigen, I might think, "Well, he's an old man living in the pre-komi past." But who understands go better than he?
Anyway, I think that SanRenSei and the Chinese Openings fall into the easy for Black to understand category.

Charles: Didn't mean that Go Seigen wanted to play them, of course - a nirensei man for 25 years. Those books are some of the best fuseki material of recent times; in comparison the new Kato book on the Chinese seems a disappointment. There are some good volumes put out by Ai Books, for example those by Otake in a pair 'Fuseki with Black', 'Fuseki with White', and the examples in the first of those give a much richer diet.

[2] Tristan: Sorry, Charles, but as a musicologist I cannot resist pointing out that J. S. Bach did read books on harmony, in the sense that he spent huge amounts of time copying and studying works by other composers, and his education would also have included reading musicae poeticae (compositional treatises). But the point you made stands: like Bach, Takemiya must not only have spent hour upon hour studying the basics, but also has an immense natural understanding that helps him to find exceptions and new ways of looking at things. We can study hard, but there's no substitute for that kind of innate ability, which is why Takemiya's omoyo strategies work so much better than mine.

Charles: Yes, interesting if he did when he didn't have to. Europeans don't actually have a stereotype of 'traditional master', I think - it's all got overlaid with myths about Romantic-period geniuses, scientists making headline-grabbing breakthroughs, and so on.

Tristan: Hmm, I was thinking on the lines that even when you have enormous talent for something, you still need to learn how to use it. Bach couldn't write good harmony before he encountered examples of it; people don't pop out of the womb with perfect pitch (not actually a genuine sign of musical talent, but that's by-the-by), but have to hear each tone and learn its name, even if that takes place so early on that they cannot recall this learning process; even go professionals start off weak, before they are shown the way by their teachers (you can find online numerous games by a younger, weaker Takemiya in which he loses while holding several stones' handicap).

Tristan I have deleted the discussion on music beneath because it was becoming irrelevant. This notice itself can be deleted after a day or two.


BobMcGuigan: I think Takemiya's play with white is more admired by other pros than his san-ren-sei play with black. I know amateur players who almost always play san-ren-sei or Chinese style with black and admit that they don't really understand how to handle a game in which there is no large moyo.

Charles: Yes, this has been said by Otake, and probably is a commonplace for pros. A big difference to my mind, as I've posted before, between amateurs who think they can play like Takemiya, and pros who know they can't.

Dieter: How about the difference between amateurs who don't play like Takemiya, thinking they know what distinguishes them from the cosmic knight, and pros who don't either but who know why ?

HolIgor: There is a belt of players on IGS who like to play one-sided fuseki. These players are about 4k-2k in rating. I believe these are people that understand these particular openings that concentrate on one side of the board (such as the san-ren-sei and the chinese) but have not grasped other possible opening strategies. But as the players become stronger the choice of opening strategies becomes move diverse. In fact, only those who can succesfully overcome the one-sided openings are promoted to the higher ranks. Of course, better players also play san-ren-sei or Chinese fuseki from time to time are part of a larger repetoire of opening strategies.

kokiri: It always seems a shame to me to limit oneself to a few openings at the start of a go game. One of the beauties of the game, to me, is the empty board, and the range of variety that it implies. However, maybe a consistant opening strategy would lead to better results. This would obviously be a concern to professionals (who get paid through winning) but also maybe to people looking to improve their rank. As to why people play the sanrensei and chinese fuseki, I guess it's only natural for people to copy professionals; its just a shame we're no longer in the shinfuseki era.

dnerra: I have some agreement and some disagreement. I think it is useful to try to play an opening where one _thinks_ one understands its concept (even if one doesn't). Maybe then one can understand better where it went wrong.

But I agree that limiting oneself to one-sided openings is neither fun nor good for long-term improvement. I once got an advice from a 6D that I still like very much: He said one should try to consistently use one opening for a couple of months. Then one will understand better what is happening, and generally draw more benefits from the analysis. Of course, it's both fun and instructive to add to this some database search and compare how the pros played similar situations. Or maybe pick one of the side formations explained in Charles' articles on gobase.org, and play it whenever you have the chance to it. And remember that you are _not_ doing this to be better prepared than your opponent for this specific opening (or similar chess crap :-) ), but to understand this opening better.



Path: Harmony   · Prev: AZenWayToJoseki   · Next: EquityAndSoundness
This is a copy of the living page "High-concept opening myth" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.