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Taisha Joseki
Difficulty: Advanced
Keywords: Joseki
The taisha joseki is a famous mokuhazushi pattern known as the "joseki of a thousand variants" and is commonly regarded as one of the most difficult josekis. Even professionals sometimes make mistakes in this joseki and new variations are found on regular basis.
White 1 through Black 9 is one standard variation of the taisha. A possible continuation is Black a, White b, Black c. AvatarDJFlux: the Taisha really does have hundreds of variations. According to Ishida, at the position below, Black can choose between a, b, c and d. Each of these, in turn, can lead to other 5 or 6 variations, and so on geometrically...
Please bear in mind that all these variations need favourable ladders at every possible place, so in order to challenge your opponent with the Taisha you'd better check your zig-zags... ;-) lavalyn: Which of course means that opening at tengen suddenly acquires new meaning - shicho-atari for every corner! Who needs to check the opposite corner of the board...? DJ: Very often the taisha is used to start right away a colossal fight that would spread all over the Goban. No wonder kyu players like me are scared by such joseki. Luckily, the taisha has simple variations too: if you don't feel like going for complications and blood-thirsty fights, you still have many ways to avoid the Taisha! In the 1980s this was seen as bad, because it simplified the game too much, taking the beauty of subtlety away from Go: at that time complicated joseki like Taisha (or even the Nadare Joseki) were therefore seldom played. Today it is just the opposite: the simplification of the game is seen positively (as far as I know especially by Korean players), because it skips the difficulties of the chuban (middle game) and brings the game directly to the yose (endgame) stage, where it is easier to perform calculations. These considerations affect where Go is going. -- DJ Page created by Dave Sigaty This is a copy of the living page "Taisha Joseki" at Sensei's Library. (C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0. |