Calvin
KGS 4k
San-san obsession
Even since I started playing and studying the basic opening moves, I've had an obsession with the idea of playing the 3-3 point in an empty corner, although I haven't actually played it that much myself because my early attempts didn't produce good results. But those early failures don't mean anything to me now, and I'm itching to re-think my game after playing Kobayashi fuseki as black or star point and 3-4 point as white for so long.
Fortunately, there are more sources for study. There's Cho Chikun's book, which deserves another read, and of course pro games. The josekis themselves are simple and the 3-3 in general has a simpifying effect on the game, making one of the corners of the board less interesting for a while to pursue action elsewhere.
San-san practitioners
I did some kombilo searches to determine who the biggest practitioners of the 3-3 point are. Since far fewer players play it as black then as white, it's important to separate them:
Most games in GoGoD as Black (>= 10), with frequency of player's total games where they played 3-3.
# Freq Player
109 (73.6%) Fujisawa Hosai 87 (14.7%) Sakata Eio 40 ( 4.8%) Cho Chikun 35 ( 9.8%) Go Seigen 16 ( 3.7%) Kitani Minoru 13 ( 5.6%) Yamashiro Hiroshi 13 ( 4.0%) Ishida Yoshio 10 ( 1.8%) Seo Pong-su 10 ( 6.9%) Kudo Norio
Most as white (>= 50)
265 (44.9%) Sakata Eio 166 (49.0%) Ishida Yoshio 117 (14.0%) Cho Chikun 112 (16.1%) Rin Kaiho 101 (19.9%) Otake Hideo 98 (13.2%) Hashimoto Utaro 66 (17.6%) O Rissei 66 (11.2%) Kato Masao 61 (15.9%) Fujisawa Hideyuki 58 (16.4%) Ma Xiaochun 50 (9.0%) Seo Pong-su
So that's plenty of study material. Of course the usual suspects Cho, Sakata, Hashimoto, Go Seigen and Hosai show up, but I didn't know that Kato had dabbled in it so much. I also didn't know there were pros who played san-san either as black or white in more than 50% of their games!
Some concepts I am currently trying to understand better:
Developability, open skirts, and the macroendgame.
In general, this is part of my goal to improve my oyose, the macro-endgame. I have studied professional games since I was 30k, with various levels of understanding as you might expect, and I now feel that one of the biggest parts of the game I have left unstudied is the early endgame. The fuseki and the middle game have general principles that give reasonable results, and I've seen my share of pro lectures and read the approrpiate strategy books, so I'm not feeling I'm missing anything big here. Of course I still make big mistakes in these areas, but mostly I attribute it to poor attention, inexperience, or shallow reading rather than flat out ignorance. I'll readily admit total ignorance of the macroendgame, because the material I've seen on it is rather sketchy. Most endgame books deal with tesuji and late endgame sequence values, which are important, but in many games it seems there are 50-60 moves between the middle game and those more settled postions where I am completely lost and am probably losing lots of points. So I have taken to studying this section of pro games to improve my intuition in this area. There is a feeling of playing away from strength that seems to persist into the endgame further than I would have expected.
The following were added when I was about 12k, but still these are important.
Thickness and compensation
I think that there is a slight problem with the way thickness sometimes described in English translations of joseki books ind in informal discussions. One often sees or hears phrases such as: "white gets thickness in exchange for territory" or "white gives up territory in exchange for thickness." Although technically correct, it leaves out the important point that the thickness isn't immediately worth anything. Although the territory can be counted and will likely remain mostly the same throughout the game-plus or minus some amount depending on sente in the endgame-the value of thickness depends on how well it is utilized. This is common knowledge and is not controversial. The problem with the traditional phrasing is that this it makes it sound like it's an exchange of money for goods. But it's more like an exchange of money for stock options, or maybe like a loan. So a better way of thinking would be:
White's strategy: "I, white, I am going to loan black some territory in exchange for thickness. I hope to use my thickness to collect on this loan with interest. I will therefore keep track of this debt and make sure I get paid in some appropriate form before the end of the game."
Black's strategy: "I, black, I am going to get some territory on loan from white in exchange for giving her thickness. But I am a sneaky cad and I plan to default on this loan before the end of the game. I will keep wihte busy and by the end it will be too late for white to collect."
So if you are white, you need to be a vigilant creditor and remember that black owes you something. At the end of the game you should be able point somehere and say: "this is where I got what was owed to me." If you can't do that, you probably get cheated.
If you are black, you have to make sure you can default, and reduce white's ability to collect.
Ko is your thug to collect to your debt.
It seems logical that thick shapes probably cost some extra or slow moves in order to keep the weakness to a minimum. If a shape has too many weakness, it is not thick, after all. It's a global consideration, but if you are playing thickly there is a good chance that you are owed something in ko threats. The ability to create favorable ko situations or to play in such a way as to profit from the fact that your opponent is afraid to fight a ko would seem to be a requirement for anyone who needs to get maximum benefit from thickness.
Thickness and endgame profit.
Thick play should mean that your opponent has to be more conservative in the endgame. He probably owes you some gote moves. I don't understand this very well, but have heard about it.
Simply connecting is often sente.
Often I have a feeling in tactical situations that connecting is slow, even if it has a sente follow-up. Simply is the proper move here, even though I have the urge to force at a, which is bad, because black needs
after
anyway. I have to get a better feeling over when solid connections require responses rather than thinking of them as passive moves.