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When To Use The Magic Sword
    Keywords: Joseki

Chris Hayashida: Hopefully this page will further explain some of the variations of Magic Sword Joseki.

In progress

First of all, the set up:

[Diagram]
The two-space, high pincer

Outer attachment

Let's look at the attachment at White a first.

The followup depends on the status of the ladder going to the lower left.

Dieter: b is discussed at 3-4 Point, High Approach, Two Space High Pincer, Ogeima and subsequent.



Outer attachment, ladder favors Black

If the ladder works for Black, he can answer W1 with the following:

[Diagram]
The ladder works for Black

White can't play at a because the ladder doesn't work. The diagram for White b follows:


[Diagram]
The ladder works for Black, part 2

Black b looks like more of a severe move


[Diagram]
The ladder works for Black, part 3

B7 is aiming at the cut at a or cutting off the group on the right at b.

Chris Hayashida: This means that the tsuke (marked) was bad to begin with if the ladder favors Black.



mgoetze: It seems to me that the most reasonable answer to the page title is: never. I just searched Gobase for the following position:

[Diagram]
Search position

Note that this is only a 9x9 subboard, so almost any global context is allowed. The result: a whopping 12 hits. There must be more than 24,000 games in van der Steen's database that have been played since 1931, in other words: since this sequence first became known, it has come up in less than 0.05% of all pro games. Certainly there are many rare joseki that are less well-known but come up much more often, so it seems to me that studying this "joseki" is quite probably a waste of time.

Anonymous: A lot of responses don't appear in pro games if they have to be elicited by the opponent making a bad choice regarding a ladder. This does not mean that studying these variations is without use. How do you know the right sequence when you don't understand the alternatives. If you ever attach on the outside then it seems this is knowledge worth having. I don't see why you'd brush off something so casually and seemingly with little thought. Nobody is forcing anyone to examine these variations.

mgoetze: Even the outside attachment itself is quite rare in pro games, I don't see why I would need to worry about it much. But when it is played, it is much more common to respond with a hane, even if the attaching player does not have the ladder. Example: Cho U (White) vs. Yamashita Keigo (Black):


[Diagram]
Meijin League, 2003-07-03

The reason I put a note here is that people might well think, if a joseki has it's own name, it must be important. This is not the case, thus the clarification. If you want to study it anyway, noone's stopping you.

BobMcGuigan: The ladder mentioned above is favorable for Black. It was also mentioned above that if the ladder favors Black, White should not play the outside attachment. Yet Cho U played the outside attachment in this game. And Yamashita didn't play the moves which supposedly lead to an advantage for Black. So the question is why? It is safe to assume that Cho and Yamashita would be aware of the above analysis if it is correct so, is something wrong with that analysis?



Dieter: Bob's last comment needs to be explored. There is no consensus on this item whatsoever. I'll try to find time.



This is a copy of the living page "When To Use The Magic Sword" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.