Lesson 8c – Choosing Joseki (3)

Hello Everyone. Today, we will complete our Joseki Fundamentals before we move on to study each Joseki in detail. As I have mentioned in the previous lessons, rote memorization of Joseki is not good but it will do you a lot of good if you study Joseki because the moves in Joseki represents good moves and if you understand why those moves are good, you can apply them throughout your game, not only in Joseki. Also, just understanding why the moves are good is also not enough because we play Go on the whole board and therefore cannot just look at one corner. That’s why knowing how to choose the correct Joseki to play is as important as knowing why those Joseki moves are good moves.

The legendary Master Go Seigen said this in his book, A Way of Play in the 21st Century:

“Joseki cannot really be played so simply. Figuratively speaking, a joseki is like a medicine. A medicine precisely tailored to a particular illness is extremely effective, but making a habit of taking one and the same medicine all the time regardless of whether you have a headache, an abdominal pain, or a bone fracture is not very wise. Similarly, you should not use a particular joseki all the time just because you like it.”

So there you have it. I hope you get the point.

My copy of the the book autographed by Go Seigen sensei.

So let’s move on to today’s lesson. Choosing the correct Joseki based on the whole board situation.

In the previous two lessons, we have discussed about the various properties of the approach moves and pincers. Now let’s put these knowledge to use.

Here is an example from the excellent book Whole Board Thinking in Joseki by Yang Yilun. Let’s look at all these four diagrams before we move on to investigate them one by one. As you can see, the top left corner is exactly the same in all four diagrams. Black made an approach move to White’s 3-4 corner stone and White gave black a 2-space low pincer. Black has four choices in response to this pincer, being the points “a” to “d”. However, the whole board situation in all four diagrams are different and therefore in this perspective, Black shall answer differently based on this whole board perspective.

Diagram 1, 2

Diagram 3, 4

Answers:

Diagram 5.

The jump of Black 1 in Diagram 5 is the correct Joseki answer to Diagram 1. After White answers at 2, Black 3 is a good pincer-extension, pincering the White lone stone while extending from his 4-4 stone on the top right, enabling development potential on the top right area.

Diagram 6.

The second problem is different from the first one in that White already has a thick group on the right side. If Black plays as in Diagram 5 above, it is disadvantaged and there are also no development potential for Black as exists for Black in Diagram 5. Black answers with Black 1, pressing White’s head. This technique is often used to make the opponent over concentrated. The general rule of thumb is that you should not touch your opponent’s lone stone because doing that will make it stronger. However, in a situation where your opponent is already very strong, there is no harm touching it and making it stronger. In most cases, the effect is that you are making him over-concentrated, i.e. a group or several groups of very strong stones lumping together in a small space.

After Black 15 capturing the White 8 stone, Black built a strong stone to counter White’s strong stones on the right side.

Diagram 7.

Diagram 7 is the answer to Diagram 3. This diagram is different from Diagram 6 in that White do not have a strong group on the right side and Black can look forward to attacking the two over-stretched White stones by splitting them. However, Black need to reinforce itself first, making itself strong first before attacking. Black 3 ensures Black of a base and White extended to White 4 which makes no harm to the Black lower left corner since Black’s corner enclosure is already strong and facing the lower right side. Black can next aim at playing a Joseki on the top right that will have the effect of splitting the White stones. Where will you play?

Diagram 8.

In Diagram 8 above, it is obvious that White wants to play a center oriented strategy with the marked triangle stones. In this situation, the Black move of Black 1 is the correct move to try to nullify the influence of these marked White stones. Black reinforces its own group by making good shape with Black 5.

Therefore, as you can see, the shape in the top left corner is the same in all four diagrams but Black’s choice of Joseki is different in each of the four diagrams because the whole board situation is not the same. Therefore, in choosing and deciding which Joseki to use, you must look at the whole board situation before doing so.

I will end the lesson here but if you would like to study more, I encourage you to get hold of a copy of Mr. Yang’s excellent book. In the next few lessons, we are going to dive inside and study a few dozens Joseki moves.

Till then, have fun!

Lesson 8b – Choosing Joseki (2)

Hello everyone. Today we are going to continue talking about how to choose Joseki. But before that, let’s talk a little bit about the subject of Strategy. We often hear people say the word strategy but what does strategy really mean? We hear about strategies to win a war, business strategies, even strategies on how to win the love of a girl.

So what really is strategy? I am not a military man but I have reasonable experience in business strategy and also strategy applied to games like Go or the myriad of boardgames that I play. To think about it, when we talk about formulating a strategy, we are really talking about Choice and sticking to that choice that we have made, i.e. the choice that we make, such as the markets that we want to serve, the demographic or pychograhic segments that we want to target on, a particular plan of actions that we want to take to outsmart our competitors and such. One thing I learn about strategy is you cannot be everything to everybody.

In a way, I think this is the same when applied to Go, since Go is a strategic game. You look at the board and you formulate a strategy, that means to say, you think of a particular plan of actions that you want to take. Do you want to go for territory or do you want to build a huge moyo the cosmic style? Once you have chosen, you should follow that strategy till the end, and it will be a great disaster if in the first 20 moves you implemented a Territorial strategy and then in the next 20 you go for a Moyo strategy only to come back to a Territorial strategy in another 20 moves. This way of playing is disastrous. After you have made your choice, i.e. your strategy, you need to stick to the plan and see it into fruition and till the end. You need to persevere. Just by doing this, I believe your game will improve.

Okay, let’s move on to today’s lesson. Today we are going to talk about how to choose a pincer.

Diagram 1.

When White 1 approaches the Black corner stone, the first thing that Black need to think about are these:

a. To pincer or not to pincer?
b. Can I Tenuki?

If Black decides not to pincer, then he can play at “g” and if he decides to pincer, he can consider the points from “a” to “f”. “a” and “b” are called tight pincers while “c” to “f” are called loose pincers.

So first things first, how do you decide whether you want to pincer or not? Basically, you pincer because you want to deny your opponent of an easy base. Secondly, you may also want to pincer because you want to develop in the direction that you pincer from, i.e. a pincer-extension (I hope you did not forget about this), thirdly, you pincer because you want to disrupt your opponent’s strategy and fourthly, you pincer because you have the advantage of strength and you want to put your opponent into a fight that is to his disadvantage.

Once you have decided to pincer, then which pincer should you choose? A tight one or a loose one? Tight pincers are severe and engages the opponent into contact fighting. When you choose a tight pincer, besides knowing that you may get into contact fights, you also want to know that the pincer has less effect on the side that it is pincering from. A loose pincer on the other hand is just the opposite of the tight pincer.

Diagram 2.

In Diagram 2 above, Black 2 is a tight pincer against the low White 1 approach. The sequence to White 11 is a common Joseki and as you can see, there are a lot of contact fights, which are in accordance with the fundamentals that we have discussed previously. I will discuss more about this when we talk about this Joseki in detail in future lessons.

Diagram 3.

In Diagram 3 above, Black 2 is a loose pincer and as you can see in the diagram, the moves are more relaxed.

Since we said in Diagram 2 that a tight pincer will provoke contact fights, you will normally want to start a fight if you have more strength than your opponent, i.e. in this sense, strength means you have more stones in the area of fight than your opponent.

Another thing that you will notice when you compare Diagram 2 and Diagram 3 is that in Diagram 2, the top side of Black is higher. Compare the position of Black 8 in Diagram 2 and the position of Black 4 in Diagram 3. Obviously, Black 8 is higher than Black 4 and this is another characteristic of a tight pincer, i.e. a tight pincer will give you a higher position while a loose pincer will generally give you a lower position.

Next, how do you decide when to use a high pincer and when to use a low pincer? In general, you want a high pincer if you want more speed and you want the stone to participate more in the fighting while in a low pincer, you intend to settle the position quickly and get a base.

Diagram 4.

Black 2 in Diagram 4 above is a loose and high pincer and in the Joseki that follows, you see that Black is moving faster into the center and participating in the fight actively.

Diagram 5.

Diagram 5 above is an example of a tight and high pincer. The Joseki to Black 10 is a common Joseki and you can see that compared to the low pincer in Diagram 2 above, this high pincer is more active and develops faster.

At the end of the day, one cannot say that one choice is better than the other but the choice that you make must be from a whole board perspective as well as to fit into the strategy that you want to employ. The choice of Joseki is always thought in terms of these. You may have a good Joseki locally but it may be really bad if you look at the whole board and if it is a misfit for your overall strategy.

I am going to talk about this in the next lesson and till then, have fun. Play more go and solve more Life and Death problems please.