I watched Samsung cup Baduk TV broadcast, and the commentator Song Taegon 9p said 3-5 point is recently the most popular research topic among Korean and Chinese professionals.
I've seen two professional games with 3-5 points during the last several weeks. Both are from white and the results were very good.





The second game was a very easy game for Park Jungwhan 9p, but he made a blunder at move 132 and lost the game.

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Amsterdam, soon.

I noticed the same thing. Paired with the black orthodox Fuseki, it seems Go is returning to its roots.

Well, very old go games from ancient china all start with 4-4 points.

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Amsterdam, soon.

The modern 4-4 didn't come around until the Shin fuseki era.

The orthodox fuseki is really a way of play that was popular in the second half of the twentieth century, and has never truly been unpopular. See http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... =10&t=5934

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Occupy Babel!

Not exactly the same, but here's a recent game where white approaches with move 3 (!) and black responds with the 5-3 point:



I thought this was a pretty cool game, and came down to a 1/2 point finish.

+1 noticed that too.

Another recent one. I also saw one with 5-3 as black's second move, but the when white took an empty corner, black just made an enclosure, making then orthodox. The same thing happens here, only as white, resulting both both white and black having orthodox formations! It's kind of an "I dare you to approach" feel. Oh, yeah, just in the Mingren title match.

Finally!

Some statistical background from the GoGoD database, using (the first time for me) the new Date Profile feature in Kombilo.

Percentage occurrence of mokuhazushi in games of the given period:

0000-1899: 37%
1900-1949: 39%
1950-1974: 14%
1975-1984: 9%
1985-1991: 7%
1992-1996: 6%
1997-2001: 5%
2002-2005: 3.2
2006-2008: 2.7%
2009-2012: 2.2%

So far in 2012 alone there has been a quickening of activity to 3.2%. However, the figures clearly show that it was the Japanese who dominated at the start of the year, although it is now the Koreans who have taken over the show.

The most obvious candidate to explain the sudden post-war drop seems to be the widespread adoption of komi, though I've never seen this connection made before. A genuine L19 discovery



No. Handicap games can feature mokuhazushi, and this move is actually very common in old Chinese games. The Chinese can probably claim to have invented it. The earliest Japanese example known is from 1600.

I love having you around here.

I'm watching Korean Myeongin (Meijin) semi final live. It is between Baek Hongseok BC (9p) and Lee Jihyeon 3p.

Baek 9p played 3-5 point as white, and the result seems good. I'll post the sgf file of the game when it ends.

The time setting for this tournament is 2 hours and 60x5 byoyomi each.

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Amsterdam, soon.

Baek Hongseok BC won the game by resignation

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Amsterdam, soon.

Many readers will be familiar with the infamous "White 8 is bad" uttered by Go Seigen. Kajiwara trumped that with a certain White 2 but in neither case was the truth of the utterance blindingly obvious to us amateurs. But here is a case of "White 6 is bad" uttered by Shuei which is fairly easy even for us to understand, and it also shows the power of the 5-3 stone.



The correct move is a corner enclosure in the lower left.

If 5-3 were associated with white in pre komi games, I wonder if its relative winning statistics are skewed. IE 5-3 has a bad rap because it was used when white was expected to lose more often, but the statistics get lumped together without accounting for subtle changes in the rules.

5-3 5-5 enclosure goes through waves of popularity, right? Were we not counting that enclosure? Or was I just imagining this based on one game I saw.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.