Joseki Heuristics

  Difficulty: Advanced   Keywords: Opening, Joseki, Theory

Joseki is defined elsewhere, as is heuristic (briefly: an empirically derived technique, not proved by theory). A Joseki Heuristic is a guideline for playing joseki when one is unable to remember or has not learned a joseki line of play; or (just as valuable) for what to do when an opponent departs from a known line of joseki play.

This page is under development and thus is more of a discussion for the time being[1]. Please contribute.

  1. Many joseki sequences end up with one side getting territory and the other influence or power. So if you get both territory and power or your opponent does then probably someone made a joseki mistake. -- Bob McGuigan
  2. Get life, Get power (influence, strength), Get territory. -- Hu
  3. Make a move to settle your shape as a first guess.
  4. Run out to live as a second guess.
  5. Attack, as a third guess.
  6. Don't get sealed in, if you can help it.
  7. When it is:
1-on-1: you may tenuki.
2-on-your-1: don't tenuki.
3-on-1: may tenuki, really try to.
4-on-1: always tenuki.
  1. If a move should be punished, punish it right away.
  2. Make good shape in the right direction. (-- steelhead)

larsen Hey, I expect that heuristics should be rather something like "You approach a hoshi stone, opponent extends. Now if you played inside opponent's formation (i.e. an approach move was not supported by your corner), crawl into the corner with keima, then extend. Otherwise you may play more loosely (star point on the side)".

Do You mean to create a collection of such commonsense guidelines, or just to keep it general?


[1] Bob McGuigan: This page was referenced on Hu's homepage but hadn't been started. I interpreted that as a request on Hu's part for some discussion of this topic. If I'm wrong, Hu, please feel free to delete my contribution. I'll start off with an easy heuristic.

Hu: Thanks for getting me going on the topic. I've been meaning to for some time.

See also MagneticJoseki


Rich: Nice idea, a couple of comments:

1) It seems attack is more active than running to the centre, which usually occurs because one is being attacked. Shouldn't attack come second, running out third?

2) I would consider punishing a move right away irrespective to be a bad habit, IMO; it could be (and in my case, usually is) aji keshi. Of course, it depends on just how wrong the move is; for a small mistake, you might gain more from using the aji or benefitting from the extra move your opponent must play.

3) Point nine seems superfluous: surely you always want to make good shape in the right direction? It seems too much like giving "always play good moves" as a heuristic for winning games.


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