Dieter: I like this essay very much and I agree with most of what it says. I particularly like the Zen analogy (or truth, if you want). I may be a little less convinced than DJ about Go's higher nature than merely a big fight. The only thing I disagree on is the level set for thoroughly studying joseki at pro level, which I would much rather locate at 5d than at 3d.
Alex Weldon: I would just like to voice (as I think I have elsewhere on Sensei's in the past) my total disagreement with the notion that there are certain things that should be studied at certain levels. I think a balanced diet of fuseki, joseki, tesuji, life and death, fighting, endgame, etc. is the right thing for a Go player of any level. Saying that one shouldn't worry about joseki until 3 dan (or 5 dan) is absurd. The value of learning, say, the standard way to deal with a 3-3 invasion is huge for a 20 kyu. The problem arises when one thinks of joseki as immutable and that any deviation can and should result in total annihilation. Well, it would also be a problem if one decided to forego all other forms of study in order to try to memorise every joseki in existence, but I don't know anyone who's done that, whereas I have known people who think that JUST studying pro games, or JUST doing tsumego is the best way to improve one's game.
Malweth: I agree to a degree, Alex... IMHO, there are different levels of the topics you've mentioned that should be studied at different rank levels. My personal thought is that actual joseki study isn't necessary at the 20-kyu level. Standard ways of dealing with a 3-3 invasion is something that can be learned by playing or playing (quickly) through the first 50 moves of pro games (which I would suggest at all levels). It's more important to learn standard moves than standard sequences at the 20k level (for example, attaching to a shoulder hit - which is useful if it happens at the 3-3 or elsewhere on the 3+4 lines). Fuseki study is much more useful at weaker ranks than Joseki study... I'd also like to point out that "Joseki study" and Joseki sequence memorization are very different things - the former is much more useful, but also much harder at the 20k level with little to no reading skills.
aLegendWai: DJ, I couldn't agree with you more. I am a person who doesn't treat joseki as absolute. Sometimes when I look at their moves, I just don't know what they are doing, their purpose etc. And sometimes their moves seem slow to me. I can't help rebel against joseki.
Unfortunately, I think quite many people trust joseki very much (including single-digit kyu) as a super authority. When I said joseki can be wrong, new joseki patterns continuously occur, they will simply say it is the analysis of pro for a long time. Can be wrong, but hardly wrong. They still wish to follow joseki.
I notices people sometimes comment moves based on joseki. Once someone did a review, it said this move was wrong and so on. The joseki move was correct. I asked why and show me how wrong it was. It didn't know how to explain, but saying this should be correct and ask me to follow.
It is my little opinion. Maybe it is only me with this idea. You may agree or disagree. I just can't help playing differently from the joseki especially when I don't know why I should do so. I think playing moves which I understand is far better than playing moves which I don't. And it is a bore and spiritless to always follow and follow blindly.
I have my own style and I like to try out new things. For most of the time, unless I understand the moves, I won't follow even if people say it is correct, or even pros don't play (or rarely play) this variation.
My weird style :) Probably it is! So that's why there's always a 30 kyu player who always argue things non-sense. :)
DJ: Dear Legend, Please do not get me wrong, and let me put mountains, rivers and clouds at their place.
Joseki *are* absolute truth. They are the distilled sweat of Professionals over a thousand-year time of playing and studying go at the highest levels and with the deepest intensity.
If Pro's agree to call a sequence joseki, stay assured that, at the present knowledge, that's the best way to play locally for an equal share.
You know, Go is not like politics in democracy, where everybody is entitled to have his/her own ideas, and even think, with full rights, that those ideas are better than others. Go is more like martial arts: stronger players will crush you ten time out of ten, no way out. There are not "other" ways to deal with a certain position, and Pro's know better. So I tend to trust them, just as I trust someone even only two stones stronger than me. He knows better. He crushes me eight times out of ten.
I was just saying that joseki's are a living body in evolution, that at our level we are not able to assess the "equality" of a corner sequence, that we should better study tsumego, tesuji, shape, direction of play, which, after all, are the bricks that build joseki's. So it is useless to "rebel". Just play freely, knowing that if, as I hope, you will progress on the Ki-do, the Way of Go, at a certain point you will have to deal with them, study them, and learn how to use them in a strategic framework.
HolIgor: I rebelled against joseki a lot. It is a hard work to understand the purpose of the moves. I started to play when I bought a 13x13 board. I knew something from the series of articles I read but that was not much. I played komoku and then answered an approach with keima extention. I beat all my friends and at some point joined the club.
In the club I was introduced to 30 most popular joseki I accurately copied in my notebook. And to my surprise, the first joseki there answered with a. I could not understand this. Why? Why not take a wider play?
was also joseki, but not the most popular one. Understanding of a as a very robust and versatile move came later and a great part of that understanding is the understanding that Shusaku knew about the properties of this particular kosumi much more than I'd ever know. For me a knowledge of joseki is not the knowledge of the moves or even of the final position. For me it is the knowledge of the properties of the particular shape of stones which includes the ways to attack it, the ways to expand from it, the ways to erase its influence, the way to solidify it into territory.
For a very long time I was very dissatisfied with . It seemed so slow, almost like a loss of a move. I tried so many things: tenuki, pincers till at some point I just reconsiled. There is nothing 100% better, other moves just mean a choice of a completely different flow of the game. So, I became happy with
.
Then some nasty kids played several times the following trick on me. Awful, isn't it. Black is almost crushed. So, the understanding of the joseki now included this kind of danger that has to be prevented in one way or another. And so on. The study of the properties of those several stones in the corner seems to never end.
Malweth: (FYI) AFAIK the correct response to the above diagram:
HolIgor: On the condition of a favourable ladder. Otherwise would be at
.
This variation is just an example of what I call properties of a particular shapes. Joseki shapes are good, yet understanding them is not an easy thing if you don't know little variations like this.
Malweth: Which is the indication that 4 here is bad.
This is probably the best continuation -- though the black base is gone.
Though this is really an indication that Black should not have ignored the approach at .
[2] (Sebastian:) Are there any examples of "quasi-joseki?s" that are just short of a joseki for that reason, but would be really worth learning for beginners because they place security over a marginal gain? Maybe one of the ways HolIgor used to continue his "Joseki" diagram above?
Calvin: I can think of a couple of moves that might be considered "quasi-joseki", namely these non-invasion approaches to the 5-4 and 5-3 points. These are given in Michael Redmond's ABC's of Attack and Defense. White can try to respond more aggressively than this and some variations are discussed in Redmond's book, but white can't easily generate the fierce variations possible with the invasion approaches, because black generates miai by playing this way. (The miai is that black can either make a base on the outside as shown or can play at
and live easily if white doesn't play there first.) He also recommends the ogeima approach to the 3-4 for black in handicap games, because it doesn't lose much and avoids complications. He puts forth a general theme that if you have an advantage already it's possible to choose lines of play that are "good enough" and don't have many variations. It's a good book.