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Understanding Joseki as a Beginner
Difficulty: Beginner Keywords: Joseki
I have a question about how to go about understanding joseki and in general when looking at a game afterwards with the other player. I've looked at various positions. Some I've seen develop in my games. The ultimate question though in a given situation is: "How do you know the other player will play someplace?" In joseki this is illustrated by commentary on the positions. Invariably Black will do one thing and then White will "naturally" do the next thing. Sometimes the move does seem natural as it follows out of ideas of good shape, or types of connections and so forth. Other instances though seem truly off the wall. I'm not saying there's no basis for it, just that it's not terribly apparent. In game review, quite often we'll look at a position where I've made an error and the reviewer will say "You should have played here. If that happens, play will continue as follows..." and then proceed to show a branching play. I guess the word that gets me is "will". What if the play didn't follow that? Sure it illustrates the points, but after about two or three moves, it seems somewhat fruitless. If I'd played differently after that "correct" move, then that branch will not develop. The only situations where it seems to make sense to say "will" are issues of life and death and sente and gote. Obviously in those situations there are moves that must be made to preserve life. I've only met one teacher on KGS who almost always says, "It might continue like this...". That makes all the difference in the world as a student, at least to me. Perhaps it's because I'm an engineer and when you say "will" you're indicating a certain rigidity that perhaps wasn't intended. Is this just experience, or am I completely blinded to something that would impose that kind of rigidity on the game? -- Remillard I guess "will" means that this is the best response the teacher can come up with. If something else was played, it would be worse, at least if you know how to respond. -- Niklaus Stefan: The reason why your move x deviates from joseki can vary from "your corner dies for a 30 point loss without compensation" to "taking the whole board into account, the aji in the end position is such that White has a 51/49 chance of grabbing an extra point in the endgame", and anything in between. In the cases you describe, the teacher should limit his comments to something that is useful to you - there's no point in mystifying people with comments that can't be understood (and this is true regardless of their level). The truly great teachers I have encountered don't comment a lot of moves, although I'm well aware that at my 2 kyu level there are lots of moves worthy of criticism. They focus on the one or two moves where you can *really* make some progress. JoeSeki Most joseki are shown without full board context, and some books try to give you that context. Most of the evaluation of a joseki is local only. Some moves are thought about for a long time before a final conclusion over whether it was a good move or not. Usually those types of moves are the ones you can learn the least from. They are usually 1 or 2 point difference in an endgame maneuver you may not understand anyway. Then there are the one-way street moves. If you don't answer this way, then there is a catastrophic end to the sequence if you know how to play it. These types are the best for learning how to fight. In general the way to study a joseki is to determine the purpose of the move, define the trade off being made. Once you understand the purpose and the trade off then you can make up your own joseki on the board that has a full board context. It may be a bad local joseki, but wonderful full board. If you can't figure out the meaning of a move or the trade off, then perhaps the move is not of the "one-way street" variety, and you shouldn't worry about it too much. Change the move a little bit and see if there isn't a variation that follows your line of thinking. If there isn't then maybe you found a variation that turns out to be the 1 or 2 point difference in the endgame types. To all but top level players, those 1 or 2 point moves are meaningless. Perhaps we should list a bunch of tips to help learn a lesson from the joseki. I have found that when you see an extension rather then a hane, there's a very good fighting reason they extended rather than haned. Try the hane, and see what happens when you get cut. You may learn a new tesuji, or you may discover that they can sacrifice the stone and get tremendous thickness for the exchange. Maybe they end in sente rather than gote. Scartol: A joseki is a series of moves whose results benefit both sides, in roughly equal amounts. So when two sides play out a joseki sequence, they are playing the moves that give them each the largest gain. If one player doesn't play the joseki move ("white will play here"), the underlying meaning is that there is a way to punish the deviant individual. Of course, as beginners, we don't know all the ways to punish non-joseki moves. So it does us no good to have better players say things like "White will play here," because we don't know what to do when White doesn't!
This is why memorizing joseki takes a player down several stones. You have to learn why each move in the joseki is played, what it's aiming for, what the possible deviations from the joseki are, and what to do when a player deviates. This can only come from experience. lavalyn: A joseki sequence must last the entire sequence - and not all deviations from what you expected will be punishable, for they may also be joseki. At my level, I see a lot of hoshi/ikken tobi formations in the opening. But that is not to say the hoshi/ogeima, hoshi/keima, or hoshi/outward kosumi (as favoured by Takemiya) is wrong because you are not familiar with the joseki variations arising from that. Try going through the joseki of a thousand variations and "punishing" your opponent when they did not make the expected move. Dieter: I think Stefan has made a very useful comment up here. Another reason why learning/knowing joseki can be harmful to your game is that when you notice the opponent to deviate from it, you risk thinking he made a big mistake and should now be severely punished. So, your judgment becomes fuzzy. In those cases where disaster is invited, it will show as much from your knowledge of basic techniques and principles as from your knowledge of joseki. Still, studying joseki is a good way to enhance your knowledge of techniques and principles. #:-7 DaveSigaty: The most important thing about Understanding Joseki as a Beginner is - You Can't! It is not only that you do not understand. As a beginner, you can not. I might add that this condition is not actually confined to beginners and in all likelihood will last for your entire Go career (it has for mine and shows no sign of going away :-). I think this quote has some relevance.
What can't you do about joseki?
What can you do?
Kungfu says: I slightly disagree with (well OK, I agree but had an idea about) what Dave Sigaty said above: He said "What you can't do is... Understand any joseki in its entirety.". I believe this is true unless you have a whole-game book somewhere, but I believe you can basically understand any joseki, especially the ones where you don't understand the moves in the joseki. Joseki is a form of balance, as someone above said. And as JoeSeki said, you must find exactly what is being traded. If you find yourself not understanding the moves in a joseki, then the reason is because you don't understand *what* is being traded. We could build a simple list, for example, territory, influence, aji... And you would immediately recognize most of the territory-exchanging josekis. All the double-digit kyu josekis are territory exchanging josekis (in my opinion). Then you get josekis which trade territory for influence, influence for influence, and maybe even some which trade other things like the potential to do x for a small amount of territory and the potential to do y. You'd have to factor in the values of x and y in addition to the territory exchanged. Finally you may need to compensate for sente, which is why some josekis don't look like josekis. But just imagine that the player with the few points less in territory gets to make the next move - that, too, can make a difference. In conclusion, since you will probably be playing with players of your own strength most of the time, take a look at what you are fighting for. Is it just territory? Or more than that? This way of thinking is a learning way and takes some time, and you are bound to make mistakes, but the more you think about that then maybe the more you will see what is going on. Or here is another way to think maybe. Each move in a joseki is asking for something. What are you asking for? If you'd like to punish someone the best way to do it is to get what you are asking for. But that's kind of one sided - if your opponent gets what he is asking for too, then it's a joseki. So you need to understand what both players are asking for - i.e. what is being traded in the joseki. Where is the balance?
Jasonred Some would argue that joseki do not exist... Since there are a ridiculous amount of different possibilities that you can attempt. In any given situation though, you can probably narrow down your selection of choices to a few really useful conventional moves, some outlandish moves which show promise, occasionally a move that even a pro might miss cause it's so unusual, and a LOT of moves which are BAD. Joseki seems to be "the reasonable response". Also, there IS more than one joseki in a given situation, sometimes. Ultimately, it's all a matter of reading ahead, and reading the general position of the board. The simpler the situation (life and death?), the less of the above is required, and thus even beginners can understand why a sequence plays out the way it does. Trading points for influence, etc, seems more complex, and some would not understand why it's joseki to trade a loss of a corner for a solid wall there. For God (divine strength/ hand of god?) maybe even the opening fuseki would have joseki, eh? This is a copy of the living page "Understanding Joseki as a Beginner" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |