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Joseki / Discussion
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A simple joseki
(add your issue at the end of this page with an appropriate headline)


Issue 1: The advantage of knowing joseki

Newbie question: What is the advantage of knowing a joseki? is it so that you can try to force the stones into a settled position while retaining sente? or is there another advantage?

Answers

Illume (25kyu): I suppose the major advantage is to recognize common continuations as early as possible. For example you might be in a position where you'd like to make life in the corner and connect two groups of stones. If you study similar positions you will know how easy or difficult it is to achieve both goals.

Scartol: Go is all about patterns. Recognizing life patterns, death patterns, fuseki patterns, yose patterns. Once you are able to recognize patterns, you can consider their context in your games and adapt your play appropriately. Knowing how to use joseki is useful to me because it allows me to approach difficult situations (like the sansan invasion) without fear. I know there is a mutually beneficial way to resolve the situation, and we can proceed along the path until there's a chance to alter the pattern.

Andre Engels: Basically, learning joseki is a short-cut to playing the best moves. If you know the joseki, you can then see the outcome immediately, and then quickly go through the moves until a place where either the opponent plays something different, or you prefer to do something different. Joseki contain a lot of knowledge from many players, which certainly beats having to think things out every time by oneself - some joseki sequences contain tesuji that even a top player would have a hard time thinking out behind the board. Also, when you know how the joseki goes on, you know whether it will be good to play it in a certain situation.

Velobici: Joseki are based upon the best play for both players viewing the corner in isolation from the rest of the board. Therein lie two dangers for folks studying joseki. The first danger is that the joseki is the best play....meaning that both players are pushing their moves to the limit. This leaves no room for error. If the other person deviates from the joseki and you dont know why their move is wrong so that you can choose the appropriate response, they may be able to convert your previous maximum effort moves into mistakes (because you failed to support the earlier moves correctly). The second danger is that the joseki ignores the rest of the board. You can play the joseki perfectly and still get a bad result because the joseki does not support your stones on the rest of the board. A simple example is chosing the wrong 3-4 point block when another invades at the 3-3 point below your 4-4 point. Many hamete are based upon deviating from the joseki and punishing the other players failure to push you for deviating.

Dieter: I agree with the second but strongly disagree with the first. Whether or not you are consciously playing joseki, a Go player should always go for the best move he can think of. If he gets punished for it, too bad. This is not something typical of joseki. Secondly, sometimes mistakes in joseki lead to disaster, sometimes they incur a 2 point loss. The fact that people are not aware of these differences is a real danger of learning joseki. "Aha! This is not joseki ! Now I will win the game." There is also another danger of learning joseki: Joseki as a source of bad habits.

BobMcGuigan: Joseki are sequences of the locally best moves but often different moves are required because of circumstances in neighboring corners or elsewhere on the board. It has often been said that joseki should not be memorized but understood move by move. Many sequences in Ishida's dictionary are no longer considered correct as a result of research and experience in pro games. If you really understand why each move is made you will be able to take advantage of mistakes and make up your own "joseki" if you don't like the standard moves. It's also worth noting that joseki "mistakes" that are considered fatal by pros might only result in a loss of one or two points, hardly likely to be fatal for most of us.


Issue 2: Joseki = even ?

phenomene : Well, I think a sequence linked from the page Joseki without further explanation should refer to something locally leading to an even result. Of course there are special circumstances where this sequence is good (when one has strength on the side as in your examples), but it is usually bad to play Kosumi-Tsuke when the opponent has room to extend. It may be called Joseki because it matches the translation of the Japanese "settled stones", but in usual go language, one uses the word Joseki for equal results only, and it is common to say "this is not joseki" for sequences better for one player. In short, it is dangerous to suggest a sequence is a rule when it is an exception.

Bill: I think it is what joseki books call a play that depend on the circumstances Baai no Te.

[Diagram]
A simple joseki

Andre Engels: I don't agree with phenomene. There are joseki in the joseki books for which they say, "Locally this is good for Black/White, but it may be different regarding on the overall position." Ishida for example, regards the sequence to the left a 'basic joseki', but also notes that "just taking this area in account, the exchange [...] is clearly favourable for Black."

DaveSigaty: Yes, he did say that, so I updated 3-4 point distant low approach to warn readers against taking such out of date advice too seriously!
More seriously though, I agree with Andre. The joseki books would be both dull and a lot thinner if they only listed lines where there was a clear consensus that the result was completely even. More importantly, perhaps, they would be forced to exclude all the joseki that are currently being used = the ones where there is no consensus yet so one player or another thinks they will lead to an advantage.

BobMcGuigan: The famous statement that "for a meijin there are no joseki" suggests that very strong players make things up as they go along, or maybe that "joseki" are determined by social convention among go players. There are also various sequences that were given the "joseki" stamp of approval in, say, Ishida's dictionary and widely played in professional games but some years later are no longer considered "joseki". Maybe all joseki dictionaries should have a warning label that indicates that the moves in this book give results that are generally considered equal at the time of writing but are not guaranteed to be so in the future. Nakayama Noriyuki, writing on this topic, said that erroneous joseki sequences seem to persist in dictionaries for 30 to 50 years. In other words, it takes a long time for go writers (and even pros) to become aware of some of these changes of judgment.

Charles At least. If one works closely with them, one becomes aware of the uneven nature of their content. For example, repeating old analysis not based on high-level play has been common up until recent times (when, to be fair, there are many thousand more games played per year by pros). You can find minor mistakes in suji, too; which is probably a sign that an insei compiled a section, rather than a strong pro. The Igo Daijiten must quite largely consist of research rather than joseki from real games. One reason that Korean go has had such an impact is that a more sceptical attitude has been applied to 'things everyone knows'.



Issue 3: What can we expect from joseki pages at SL

Floris?: I think the current pages on joseki are very flat and not very much of a help. They just give ya a few sequences and a bit of information that really I (and I asume there are others) don't care about such as "This is a traditional joseki that is still played". It really gives you the idea of: "Here is a sequence, play it or lose". I think SL should add extremely detailed commentary explaing when _it is appropriate to use the joseki, when not to use it, what the joseki focuses on (influence, corner, left side, etc.), and i guess also some history and many heavy commented examples (from pro games) of global situations of when and when not to apply this joseki sequence. I realize this seems like an impossible task, which it is. But still I feel it would add a lot of value to SL. I can contribute a lot too, but I feel some high dan player should take the initiative.

P.S. Should i add discussion items to the bottom of the page or the top? I've seen both done.

Hu: Discussion is usually added at the bottom, unless one is addressing a specific point in context, as I am here. In a few cases, discussion is added at the top, most notably Messages to People Currently Present in the Library and similar pages, which are voluminous.

Velobici: [ext] Gobase.org provides one element of what Floris? has suggested, the many examples from professional games of when a particular joseki was used and when not. The game records are not commented. It is beyond the scope of SL to provide all that is suggested. However, general recommendations of when a joseki is appropriate and when it is not would be most welcome. One question is at what level does this become suitable. My son (now 1D AGA, 2k KGS, regularly plays winning a fair share of games against a 5D AGA/3D IGS at three/four stones) has been taking lessons weekly from a professional residing in the United States for a year. The teacher has indicated which direction of play is larger/better and what general type of joseki is desired, but never said that a particular joseki is to be used in a particular situation. This is interesting. The idea of "use this joseki when these conditions arise" seems to be too formulaic to support good go play. Perhaps, when my son is stronger this will change. Perhaps, the direction of thought is not the right direction of play.

Charles My explanation.

First, it may be that SL isn't the ideal joseki dictionary. That wouldn't be surprising: no joseki dictionary that exists is the ideal joseki dictionary.

Secondly, when I post a joseki page here, it is never copied from a book. It is always researched from a database. So the information is actually more reliable in certain ways than many joseki books. We point out here some ways in which the Ishida Joseki Dictionary is misleading, for example.

Thirdly, I think the most important achievement so far is to get a structure on SL to which joseki information can be added, and then found. Please note that even this much took a number of people many hours of work.

Fourthly, it is basically a lazy attitude that someone else should work hard, so that others should have free instant access to research. My experience is that giving people hundreds of free web pages doesn't really cause gratitude. Well, human nature as usual. But it makes no sense on a Wiki to say 'someone else should do this for me'. A wiki is a community first: if it is treated like a service, eventually those doing the real work may lose interest.

Fifthly, the importance of joseki study is vastly overrated. I do think we need a reference section here on joseki. The reason is that links out of other discussions can happen. And so that backlinks can handle 'how do you use this joseki' questions. Floris, have you thought of using backlinks? In time, they should build up naturally.

Sixth, for myself I would certainly give fuseki patterns, and in particular side patterns, priority over joseki.

Seventh, there is a fair amount posted here already that isn't easily available in English. If it is due to me, then that's because I think it has some value. I have posted comments before, putting words in the mouth of Sensei (our mythical founder). I don't believe that Sensei approves of trying to tell the whole story on a joseki. It's too narrow a view of the game.

Finally, I have just checked and there are 411 pages here with the Joseki keyword. That's a number of books' worth, already. And that's without some sort of Editor figure.

Hu: As usual, Charles has expressed a thoughtful point of view, cogently, which I endorse. To address Floris' concerns, yes, it would be nice. Just do it. Where it might be wrong it will soon be corrected. What will be most right about it will be that it will have been started. Coincidentally, just a day before, I finally got working on a Joseki Heuristics page, despite my lack of knowledge, thanks to Bob kindly sparking me into life. This may be a place to help guide some selections between joseki, or perhaps a jumping off point to some more specific guidelines for selecting between joseki.

Floris?: Ok, my points:

  • I never accused anyone from simply copying information from a book ^_^ SL even particularly states that it's not allowed to do so.
  • Yes, SL already has a ton of very informative joseki pages that took many hours of work to create with joseki sequences on them, which are very useful if you want to learn the sequences, but to study them you must see game examples and commentary (I guess using them in your own games also helps, if you get the chance, that is).
  • Of course I don't want others to work hard for me to do this, I just mentioned that maybe a strong dan player should start since he/she is much more experienced with joseki than I am. As I said I am more than willing to work on this.
  • I think joseki is a very important aspect of go, yes the fuseki is important but there would be no fuseki without joseki [1]. After the first few moves a pro has already decided which joseki are globally profitable and which are globally bad. Amateurs (esp. at my level, or so I can see in my own and my opponents play) often play joseki very locally, just throwing down stones as we know the sequence (sometimes I think if it isn't good to know no joseki at all), and especially with the short average time limits on KGS we are forced to just randomly pick approach move (high, low, far, near) and follow-ups (extend, pincer, tenuki, whatever).
  • What are backlinks?
  • Yes, I have but two go books (non-joseki) and use sensei's, kogo's and turbogo for all my joseki needs. Sensei's goes the deepest and is best for studying but it is fairly hard to navigate.

Charles The point about navigation is fair; all I can say is that it is constantly being worked on here.

For the rest:

  • The comment about copying from books wasn't aimed at anyone, but pointing out that researching the whole of joseki afresh from pro games (say 3500 variations) takes time; and is valuable because of the silly situation about Ishida, English version, being reprinted without revision.
  • I think Floris still overestimates the value of joseki as set patterns. In advancing to 1 dan amateur I guess it is worth about two stones, to stop making big joseki mistakes. If quick server games make you play badly, that speaks for itself.
  • Backlinks - try this on some joseki page such as 4-4 point low approach one-space low pincer. Look through all the pages that link there (click on the page title to get a good listing). In that case you'll find half-a-dozen discussions of the joseki in a game context.

Floris, why don't you post some particular positions here for discussion? You know, there are other ways, besides asking for a 'perfect' set of joseki pages - as if someone could make them appear, by magic.

Back on the main topic, we know that Michael Redmond, starting as an insei at amateur 5 dan level, had to forget all his joseki knowledge learned up until then. He has told us that. What I don't know is how he then replaced it by joseki knowledge to take him to pro 9 dan. But I suspect it was painstaking work, based on researching in pro games. Sound at all familiar?

jfc: What is best for one person is not necessarily best for another. While it is safe to say that nearly all players want to become the best that they can, different players have different resources at their disposal. as an insei Michael Redmond had the following at his disposal:

  • a great natural ability.
  • fellow insei's to compete and study with on a daily basis
  • regular professional instruction
  • Lots of time to devote to Go. As an insei (and later as a pro) studying Go was his job.

For someone with these assets, forgetting all joseki may be the correct approach in the quest for acheiving the highest level of play. For others with more meager resources, learning joseki and then focusing more time and energy on other aspects of the game (e.g. tsumego) may give better results.

mAsterdam:

  • It is ok to quote statements or copy a board position from a book if a problem you are interested in is not discussed there.
  • Anybody can add (links to) games where certain joseki are used or deviated from.

There is a very good chance there will be very sensible comments, discussion within 48 hours (my experience: 5 minutes, by Charles and unkx80, but that may be exceptional).

  • On navigating joseki: I think irritation about inadequacy is a major source of good stuff. So I ask you to continue expressing your dissatisfaction with the current state of things. If you can be more specific (Charles e.g. asked for particular positions), this will help yourself and other people thinking about improvements.

[1] AvatarDJFlux: I believe it is exactly the other way round, there is no Joseki without Fuseki...
Since when Tactics come before Strategy??!?
I think Pro's choose a Fuseki strategy and then seek the proper Joseki (if any, otherwise they invent it) to reach their goal...
This discussion made me write A Zen Way to Joseki, something I had in mind since long...


Question: Direction of Diagrams

(Sebastian:) The diagram here starts in the upper right corner, while the diagrams in the individual pages start upper left. The advantage of starting upper left is that diagrams are better comparable - they always start at the same point, regardless of how much of the board they show. My question is: Would it make sense to flip the diagram on this page?



This is a copy of the living page "Joseki / Discussion" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.