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3-3 point shoulder hit
Difficulty: Advanced
Keywords: Joseki
The shoulder hit of White 1 is a common way of playing against the black stone in the corner. Black will almost always answer with the basic technique of stretching at 2 and White will mostly stretch too at 3. Jumping to a instead is treated below.
For Variation 1: keima
Black's keima is the most common move, though not an obvious one.. It is clear that in this joseki, White is making outside influence, while Black goes for the corner territory. Next, the jump at a, continuing to emphasize the outside, is White's most common move. White can block at b, taking the left side, which is also discussed further. She can play tenuki and regard her stones here as kikashi. gobase shows some examples of professional games where c to e were tried.
After White 1, Black 2 is considered correct shape. White 3 next makes nice shape as well, but it may be too slow, so she will often play tenuki instead. For that reason, Black 2 can also be omitted, giving Black the first chance to play elsewhere.
The white blocking move at 1 gives up White's quest for central influence, and focuses on the left side instead. Black 2 is the natural response, playing in the direction White neglected to play. After White stabilizes her group by the extension to 3 or a, the joseki comes to an end. Black should take this joseki into account when choosing between the marked move and b: it is often correct to play on the side where blocking with White 1 here is least interesting.
If Black gets to be the first to play in this corner after the basic joseki, he will almost invariably choose Black 1. The white stones jump to safety with 2, after which Black plays at 3 to deny White an easy base. White, however, can also choose to ignore Black 1 and leave her stones to themselves: even if they are captured, Black will have to use so many moves to do so that it is not in all positions disadvantageous for White. -- Andre Engels Variation 2: turn
Black's turn may be a natural one to occur to many players. In fact, it is not wrong and White must be very careful with her response.
White 2 is a mistake and Black 3 puts in on the spot. If White resists, the cut at 5 favours Black. If she submits with 4 at 5, Black 5 at 4 gives him territory while White gets bad shape.
Therefore, White usually jumps to 1 and 3 to keep up with the exchange of central influence for territory.
After Variation 3
The jump to 1 is rarely seen, with answers at a to c.
Variation 4: stretching once more (not joseki)
Another stretch at 1 is considered slow as it pushes from behind. Therefore it is not joseki. However, depending on the context this can be a good choice.
One example from BQM87:
When there is this white stone in place, it makes sense to play The jump variations
White 11 plays at a and exchanges a big black territory for thick influence in the center. White 7 can also defend tightly instead of a tiger shape. For Black 8, a peep has been played instead.
After 4, White mostly leaves the situation for a while treating her stones as kikashi. (Charles: Tenuki here is unusual, in fact. White normally plays a or b immediately. See screening kikashi for an example of tenuki.)
Quite a few pro games feature this Black 2. You would expect White to answer at a, making Black push from behind, but this is not the case. Probably White is playing 1 because she needs to play lightly. Playing 3 at a would not be in accordance with this need. Charles I could only find one such game (1962-11-15, on Gobase, none on Gogod). White 3 was at b, which even I would have played. In that game Black had a stone at c.
If Black plays at 4 here, rather than the normal clamp at 5, this transposes to a line seen earlier. Played by Otake and Yu Ch'ang-hyeok - so not really a negligible possibility. Charles.
If Black 2 tenuki, the position reverts to a three-three point invasion. This makes so much difference that it is hard to imagine Black playing this way, in the opening, unless White 1 was a ko threat or ladder-breaker.
If White 3 tenuki, Black 4 makes matters worse for White than if she hadn't approached this position at all.
While White 2 seems to be too close, Black 3 looks like kikasare. B a looks like the normal response. Dieter: I disagree, so there is an opportunity to learn something for me here. To me, Black 3 looks like honte, very much like connecting against a peep. Charles More at 3354 enclosure. Authors This is a copy of the living page "3-3 point shoulder hit" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |