Joban

    Keywords: Go term

Chinese: 序盤 (xu4 pan2)
Japanese: 序盤 (joban)
Korean: 초반 (choban)

Joban is a Japanese go term for the beginning phase of the game. Typically the opening involves dividing up the board in a fuseki. However, occasionally in games fighting begins immediately in one corner and spills out across the board.

Examples include:

  1. Kitani Minoru and Hashimoto Utaro on 21 March 1928. See below.
  2. Takenaka Kotaro 1p (White) and Matsubayashi Yoshihiko 1p in the Spring Oteai April 1934. See single-minded large avalanche.
  3. Cho Chikun and Kobayashi Koichi in the first game of the 47th Honinbo title, 15th and 16th March 1992.

[Diagram]

Kitani Minoru and Hashimoto Utaro on 21 March 1928

[Diagram]

[Diagram]

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[Diagram]

6 at S14

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The action in the lower right finally ends when Black extends with B4. White preempts the bottom left with W5. But does Black turn away to the empty corner at the top? Of course not! Instead he digs right in with 6 and the two of them go at it again. But this is running to too many diagrams, so...

[Diagram]

I will simply add that the board looks like this 45 moves later when White finally turns to the last open corner. --DaveSigaty


This is a copy of the living page "Joban" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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