Catenaccio joseki

Catenaccio joseki  

This is the so-called catenaccio joseki, referring to the defensive football style of the Italian national team in the 80s ^[1].

This joseki used to be more popular than it is now. In itself it is considered too low for White, having and on the second line, by a.o. Alexandre Dinerchtein but these lines have survived as niche joseki, for some special contexts. White may answer the pincer with a double kakari instead (see 4-4 point low approach, two-space high pincer, without side stone).

Variant  

(colors are reversed) There is also the possibility of Black playing the peep , seen in catenaccio joseki follow-up here earlier, as soon as White slides into the corner.

Later when White's corner is surrounded Black has a trick, see /Variant Life And Death

Alternatives for

Kitani's idea  

Kitani Minoru invented (or borrowed) ^[2] a joseki in which he played at the 3-3 point. It appeared in Kitani-Shimamura, 1956 2nd Top Position Tournament league. After , White plays at the circled point.

The effect of White's three stones that include is to create bad aji for Black's stones on both sides. Black cannot attach immediately at a and there are other dangers if black tries too hard to capture White's stones.

It had some popularity in the 1970s; much less fashionable now. A likely reason why this "joseki" is rarely played out is because the one-space jump followed by the 3-3 invasion is not really following the flow in most cases - the feeling is that White wants to make moves both outside and inside the corner, which appears somewhat greedy. (Compared to the usual joseki where White directly enters the 3-3, White sacrifices the outside for a fairly large corner.) This results in a smaller corner, while the outside stones are somewhat heavy and subject to attack.

Bad shape  

is supposed quite generally to be bad shape, once is played.

Indeed, Yang Yilun teaches that either should be at a or should be at b. a and b together are also bad shape.

There was an old Go World article about this by Kato Masao.

Black is happy  

is blighting .

Follow-up

See Catenaccio joseki - follow up

Is the catenaccio joseki still joseki  

When approaches with the idea of breaking up Black's side framework, KataGo (like other bots) puts White at 55%, slightly more than 1 point ahead. The preferred answer for Black is to back off at a or b.

Black's pincer is slightly inferior. White's chances grow to 57% and with half a point. Next, White should invade the corner at . However, the jump of is the big thing in this pattern evaluation. It loses more than a point and drops White back to 54%.

All the remaining moves don't change much about how KataGo evaluates this pattern. It likes the 3-3 invasion still better than the slide of , but marginally so. And it hardly objects against White's slide at , even if it's on the second line.

After the pattern, KataGo still finds White ahead by 53% and half a point.

Dieter's interpretation is that, given the fact that bots like early corner invasions, a pincer makes the corner invasion even more attractive and so loses points over extending the other side of the corner, and the jump makes it much less appealing to jump into the corner, because White has already commmitted to the approach stone, so it loses points over the direct invasion. Once that commitment has been made, sliding to make a base is not bad per se.