This question goes to 5d+ people.

Whenever I am on a losing streak I question my fuseki-style (http://senseis.xmp.net/?SplitFuseki). I like to play it, but I wouldn't like it if it cost me a significant amount of games. I am 1d-KGS and 4d/5d-Tygem, aiming maybe to become 3d-KGS and 6d-Tygem one day (I don't care to become stronger than that since it would mean to put too much work into a game). In that range of strength, would u say that my fuseki hurt my chances significantly?

5d+ in what system?

KGS. My idea behind it is that only players 2-3 stones stronger than me may be able to evaluate the situation. What's your take for instance?

Your choice of a specific opening does not matter except for your mistakes or your significantly weaker / stronger understanding of the specific opening than your opponents. Therefore, it can help to avoid your inferior and choose your superior specific openings.

From 1k/1d to 3d/5d, there can be a great difference in understanding of the opening. If you have not spent your 1000 hours on studying openings, do so now. It helps a lot. Study all kinds of specific openings so that you understand all. Study the transition into the middle game and the use of the specific openings in the middle game.

A 5d understanding the opening will practically always beat the 1d not understanding the opening simply because the 5d's better understanding of the opening suffices to create a winning position. The 5d can then maintain his lead easily, unless he becomes bored and therefore careless during the middle game. A 5d with good positional judgement will notice and bring home each 3 points lead established against a 1d during the opening. (I have successfully brought home 1 point leads against 1d players, but this is risky.) It requires a good understanding of the opening to notice small leads and know how to maintain them during the middle game. Do not think that a 1d can trick the 5d by sheer fighting (such tricks can work only in fast server games); the 5d can only beat himself by tiredness or laziness.

OC, no opening understanding at all can be desastrous easily, but this misses the point. The point of superior opening understanding is the ability to create a small early lead while the weaker opponent would not notice anything at all until the late middle game. However small the lead is, it suffices for winning. Hence, it does not matter how few points you lose during the opening. Lose some at all during the opening and you lose the game against the significantly stronger opponent. Therefore, the opening matters very much and Japanese pros with long thinking time spend most of their time during the opening. Among strong players, losing the opening almost equals losing the game, so both players need to survive the opening by creating an equal early middle game position.

There are those very young 4d/5d players without joseki and opening knowledge and with every fighting skill. Against a 5d with both solid opening and fighting knowledge, they almost always lose. The strongest kids surpass the 5d only by also overcoming their opening knowledge gaps.

Personally, I feel it's more beneficial to analyze mistakes made in a specific game. Maybe you fell behind in the opening. Maybe you misread during the middle game and lost a group. Maybe something else.

You can fall behind in several ways, so it's hard to make a generalized statement without looking at a specific loss.

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be immersed

No. If you are just talking about playing on the side early.

OTOH, my impression from the recent Pippen vs. the World game is that your fuseki in general is a bit thin.

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What's your take on the Split-Fuseki (http://senseis.xmp.net/?SplitFuseki)? How inferior is it in your opinion.

Not as inferior as your subsequent moves.

@uberdude: Don't judge me on the basis of the malkovich game here.^^ I am better than that in real life .

You're better in a real-time game than in a game with infinite time ?

Seems possible to me. Sometimes you can play bad moves by over thinking.

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be immersed

True. Whatever it is, that's our level.

Have you also considered the possibility that 2-3 stones better is essential but not necessarily sufficient ?

Maybe, or maybe your opponents are worse. I wouldn't expect a Tygem 5d with 30 seconds a move to be able to deal with your unusual style as well as we were (with some stronger players and more time). Although I think your split fuseki is slightly objectively bad (maybe loses 5 points, pulling numbers out of the air), if you are more familiar with it and know how to use it better than your opponents know how to play against it then it could actually be an advantage.

In general, all aspects of the game have influence in how strong we play. And no two of us are exactly equal in any one of these aspects, even if we have identical overall strength/rank. Given any two 5d players - one of them will *always* be stronger in the opening theory, and one (maybe even the same one) will *always* be stronger in fighting, and so on... But they are still both 5d players, and you cannot really predict the outcome of the game.

Weaknesses in one area can be compensated by strengths in another area. By this token, weakness in opening can be compensated by strong play in later parts of the game. There are countless examples of games where one player came out from opening with inferior position and yet still won the game.

The problem with being weak in the opening (as opposed to being weak in, for example, yose) is really twofold:

• Opening happens in pretty much every game, so weakness in this area will affect every game. In comparison, not every game has yose.
• Opening happens very early in the game, so any mistakes in that phase mean that you will face an uphill battle for many moves.

In addition, opening mistakes are often not immediately apparent, so they are much harder to pinpoint and fix.

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@RJ:
I am sure you are thinking right, but some stuff you say is just questionable. For example:

1000 hours? really? Do you realize it is like 6 solid months of full-time study, 8 hours a day, every weekday? And that with exclusion of anything else, like studying L&D, playing, going over pro games, etc... I am not sure who can really afford that. I find it strange to give advice to just "do so now". In real life, such study, if ever undertaken, takes long years for most of us.


A 5d will practically always beat a 1d because a 5d is a 5d while a 1d is only a 1d.
While opening theory knowledge does play a role in such matchup, it is not really the decisive point.

Were you meaning to say that a 1d with superior opening theory will almost always beat a 5d with weak opening theory? This would make more sense in the context of your argument, although I would still find it highly questionable.


So basically, what you are saying is that given two 5d players, both strong in fighting, the one who is superior in opening theory almost always wins. I would say that the one with strong opening will most likely get a better position out of the opening, but this is all you can really say. There is more to Go than just fighting and opening theory.

Did you mean to say something like "given all other skills being equal, the player with stronger opening theory will win"? If so, I find it rather trivial. You could say the same about pretty much any skill which combines into our overall strength.

And even then, what you say is not necessarily the case, anyways. If both are 5d, then theoretically they both have 50% chance of winning in any given game. My guess is that the one with strong fighting and weak opening is actually *very* strong in fighting, like 6-7d level, and so can compensate for his weak(er) opening. Otherwise he would not be a 5d to begin with.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Yes. E.g., read Rin Kaiho dictionary twice, read Nihon Kiin dictionary once, play through the opening of 1500 pro games, read go theory books about the opening.



Of course not. Also study in particular L+D, using influence and all kinds of fundamentals.



Sure. Whoever lacks enough time must make compromises and spend less time. My advice for ca. 1000h is for those with enough time.



My point is that it almost suffices for the 5d to have superior opening knowledge. The 5d is stronger in many respects, but he does not need most of them for the sake of beating a 1d.



No, because typically 5d a) are not weak at opening theory and b) are stronger in other areas as well, so (even if they fail in the opening) they have a greater chance to catch up than the 1d has.



Yes, and we can have endless discussions about this, but I maintain my main point that the one with knowledge of opening, basic fighting and positional judgement wins in most cases.



See (a) above. The exception is 5d children having neglected detailed opening study so far. See my earlier message.

So basically, your advice is for him to spend the next 3-4 years working on Go 8 hours a day, every day, and "do it now"?
Do you really think this is a practical advice?


And my point is that 5d is stronger than 1d in so many areas that he does not need superior opening knowledge to win. He might decide as well to win with superior fighting skills, or even superior yose skills, or whatever.

For example, just for kicks, when playing a much weaker player online I sometimes purposefully play a very bad opening just to make the game more interesting for me later on. And if the opponent is really weaker, like in your example, I have no problem winning in any case.

This is a very trivial point.


So basically, what you are saying is that the one with more skill and superior knowledge, especially in the main areas of the game, usually wins.
This I also find a trivial point.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Bantari, 1000h at 10h per day plus 5h playing (which I did when studying mainly the opening, the first ca. 170 moves of 1500 pro games and ca. 1500 LD problems as a 1k to become 1d in 5 months and 2d after another 3 weeks and 3d after another 2.5 months) means 100 days (some 3 months) if studying only the opening. I.e., a few months and not your proclaimed years.

The time consumption for the opening is similar to the time consumption for studying ca. 500 josekis seriously and their underlying go theory because there are that many openings and go theory for understanding how to play them is similarly rich. (Go theory for joseki and opening is also applicable for the middle game, whose go theory is even much richer though. So if you spend time for studying the middle game, you can save some time for studying the opening.) Quite like 500 josekis cannot be learnt by simply looking at their sequences and trying to remember them by heart permanently, 500 openings cannot be learnt permanently without understanding.

You discuss as if 1000h for getting the 5d understanding of the opening when starting as a ca. 1d were an exaggeration, but it is not. The opening phase of the game represents ca. 1/4 of the game. Having to spend ca. 4 * 1000h = 4000h of study from 1d to 5d is a lower limit rather than an exaggeration. (Reminder for the kyu players reading this: the learning curve is exponential. Study time as a kyu pales when compared with study time to be spent as a dan player in order to improve.)

If there were shortcuts using the literature, I would mention them. Unfortunately, there is hardly any literature on opening theory for dan players. It hardly becomes any better than teaching by examples and so does amount to the ca. 1000h. Only the very most popular openings (such as Sanrensei, Chinese, Shusaku) get a slightly better, but still very insufficient, coverage. Some time can be saved by replacing it by money for teachers, but only if choosing teachers teaching opening as go theory instead of examples only (in which case reading opening dictionaries amounts to the same amount of time and is much cheaper).

Actually I would say the number is realistic.

A 6 dan told me once he'd spent 200 to 300 hours on the nadare alone, a remark I only understood later (it's the running fight/haengma aspects where there is a lot to learn). Quite a few years ago, when I was compiling my own fuseki index, I noticed how hard it is to understand what is really going on (i.e. the "funnel" or whatever you would call it, distinguishing the small group of plays pros would even consider in a typical position around move 10 of a game, and the much more random amateur scatter). It is a meaty and demanding subject, and just as important, you probably have to draw your own conclusions.

As a training method ... well, plenty of people here self-prescribe training, but I'm a bit sceptical about that. There is something in what Robert says here that chimes with my own views: namely that the way to improve is to get into better types of positions, rather than play the same old types of position a bit better. Time spent on the opening is supposed to address that issue.

Go is my main hobby, and I can only give it realistically 1-2h day, and because I'm doing an effort to do so lately. 1000h at 1h day is slightly less than 3 years already.

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