Strange Openings

    Keywords: Opening

Introduction

In Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, Kageyama says that if you can't win playing an enclosure-and-extension fuseki, you should adapt your opening to your own playing style. This advice probably doesn't extend so far as the Stanley fuseki[1], but pros and strong amateurs often play openings which differ from the classical "enclosure and extension" pattern.

Many examples from the New Fuseki era exist, of course, but that seems to have settled down in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. Periodically, though, you run into exceptions.

Examples From Pro Games

Pros Noted for Unusual Openings

Elsewhere

  • The Great Wall is an unorthodox fuseki advocated by Bruce Wilcox.
  • [ext] groep on KGS(6 dan) always plays a variation of the Great Wall where he spends his first 8 moves playing K3, K5, etc up to K17
  • [ext] High55 on KGS(6 dan) usually plays his first two moves on facing 6-4 points.
  • "Stanley,"[1] as mentioned above, plays a very unusual fuseki in conjunction with a greedy, overplaying style.
  • Davou played an unusual tengen fuseki in a rengo with a 7-dan player.
  • Alakazam? on KGS often plays the 6-3 point, Oomokuhazushi, also called "Phantom Kakari" or "Youkai Kakari".
  • Ongoing Game 2, a Wiki rengo, featured an unusual enclosure based on an immediate approach and mokuhazushi.
  • [ext] hoshionly on KGS plays only star points in the opening, except to protect his star points from being captured. This is unusual because he will even contact 3-4 point stones to get the hoshi, and then tenuki. He then goes on to spectacularly kill most of the board.
  • [ext] rowurboat on KGS plays five in a row in the centre, then claims victory. Then there is a lot of fighting.
  • [ext] sevenseven on KGS plays the 7-7 point in the opening.
  • In a 14-kyu game on DGS played in October 2010, the player joachimdo played an extremely solid fuseki.

Some of these experiments are consistent with the idea that you should have no plan in the opening. Others just seem playful.


Footnotes
[1]: Note that the StanleyStandardFuseki page is flagged as Humour


This is a copy of the living page "Strange Openings" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2012 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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