In go, however, you must be able to play the game your opponent sets in front of you. Without reading ability born from tsumego and tesuji problems, this is much harder, especially once you leave the opening. Even in the opening, if you happen to play against a player like me, who ignores corners to stop common openings, and who tries to pick fights everywhere, you will have a hard time.

So you are saying that white strategy is to invade black's moyo then employ a "Balanced Defense", where white constantly monitors the life status of various groups around the board and takes profit when possible?

Defending overplays can get tedious, but I find the Chinese more challenging because the 3-4 it isn't invadable and has quite a bit of territory, furthermore it seems to be devised to take advantage of weak invasions on the sides.

I actually just stop the Chinese from happening in the first place.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Back when I didn't know how to handle sanrensei, there was a player that liked to play sanrensei every single game: so when I got white against him, I did this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Yes, I'm a corner behind, but now the game's out of his known strategy. The result will now depend on fighting, where my reading shines, instead of strategy, where my opponent may be strong.

I don't necessarily think that prevents the generalized Chinese Fuseki strategy, there are many variants up the side even the Kobayashi is considered in that group sometimes. Though that may prevent the specific five point low extension, and even that may get developed in the other corner.

If your opponent is dead set against you playing a certain strategy, there's virtually no way for you to force it (unless you hold black and want to play an opening based around the parallel Nirensei...you will always be able to make that shape).

Two people can play the same piece of music with all the notes correctly, but one may sound a lot better than the other.
Some people are satisfied if they can play all the notes correctly, other people want more.
Some people are satisfied having kyu strength, other people want more.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

There are two Chinese fusekis that I know of (the normal one, and mini - the micro-chinese is almost the same as those), and both of them put a stone on the side I've approached the 3-4 from. The Kobayashi is markedly different from the Chinese opening, and I wouldn't put it in the same group; it puts all of your eggs in one basket, but the Chinese opening has a backup plan.

For reference:
Kobayashi

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
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$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Chinese (a for micro, I saw b called the 'American opening' as a joke at someone who tried to play the Chinese but got it wrong)

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Mini-chinese (a for micro)

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 4 . . . . . , . . . . . 1 . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . 2 . . . . . , . . . . . , 3 . . |
$$ | . . . . . 5 . . . . 7 a . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

All you have to do to stop any chinese fuseki as white is immediately approach any 3-4 that is played. You don't even have to give a corner to do this because when you approach a 3-4, and your opponent leaves it, it belongs half to each sides.

If you're actually serious with this, the only one you're ridiculing is yourself. But enough of that.

I'll make one more attempt at a civilised answer. I don't visit 19*19 every day so forgive my late reply. If you read my post carefully you'd notice I never advised against studying strategy. But what you need to understand is that the prerequisite for good strategy is good reading. You will encounter tsumego problems in every game you play. Not only life & death but also enclosing, cutting and escaping problems. Of course these won't often be the same problems you trained with. But tsumego is not about remembering the solutions to all the problems and using them in games. The point is training your ability to read ahead which is the single most important skill for your playing strength.
(Btw some helpful people actually provided examples of common l&d situations arising from a chinese fuseki but you didn't care to comment them.)

I like the comparison to making music. You admit that with your approach you aren't able to improvise freely. In a game of go however you have to improvise all the time because you have to adapt to your opponent's play. Think of your reading ability as your improvisation muscle which you need for all stages of the game. You can also train this by seriously playing, of course. But you won't always have a partner ready to play with you so that's what tsumego is for.

One more thing: if you actually want to learn something, I suggest showing some humility and respect to people who want to help you and actually take the time to answer your questions (and btw are much stronger than you). This will not only help your go strength but also all other areas of your life.

Golem7, I thought in whatever language you spoke, calling someone an amateur was a way to make some chums, so I replied in kind. Evidently you have not read my posts very well, since you haven't seen that I said maybe 10% of tsumego were actually useful in a game, ironic since you believe in reading so much, but as it stands I have yet to see a tsumego from you that would contribute to this conversation about strategy in the Chinese Fuseki.

What's ironic, is that three people replied to your request for Chinese Fuseki-related tsumego, and instead of thanking them for their contribution or even acknowledging as you said you would that tsumego is indeed relevant to strategic considerations, you complain that the person you asked hasn't responded with information others have already offered.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Maybe Golem7 should thank them, then again maybe he understood the sarcasm in the question.

May I suggest an alternative way of looking at Tsumego? From your arguments, you seem to view them as training your ability to read out paths to life in artificial situations. I'd argue that the reason they're about living and dying is only because that makes a nice, straightforward puzzle. The point of doing 1,000 problems that involve some variation of "get your opponents stones into a squeeze to kill them" isn't necessarily because you'll get the chance to kill stones that way in many games, but because more often you will get the chance to form some extra influence with a squeeze in the middle of the board, or will spot a honte move stopping a squeeze that would scuttle an attack you want to pursue.

Tsumego are about spotting opportunities for tesuji, prioritizing different moves involved in an attack, exploiting liberty counts, etc. These all arise very naturally in a game. The problem is that "White to reinforce connection in such a way that he also puts pressure on black's stones" is lousy instructions for a puzzle. So useful patterns are transformed into artificial problems so that a lesson more likely to be put into practice running out with the least aji becomes the solution to finding life for a group.

In a game, missing a tesuji might mean something that could've been sente is now gote, or you've jumped out one space when you could've gotten away with two. It's difficult to realize, even in review, that the move was a mistake. If you just can't see the solution to a tsumego, there are going to be analagous situations you'll also miss in a game and never realize you missed them.

Go is a hobby for us, so there's no need to do tsumego if you don't like them: It's a wonderful game at all levels. But the idea that only 10% of tsumego have something to train us in strikes me as too literal a look at them. Yes, the positions are artificial. But you aren't learning just that configuration of stones, you're learning to see how the aspects of Go interact on a more instinctive level and training your ability to hold more and longer sequences in mind.

I know I get away with many L&D situations that my opponent just hasn't read out, and I know sometimes I don't take maximum advantage of a situation and really take it to my opponent, but those are opportunities for improvement and many times after a game is over if I lose (or sometimes even when I win), I look at the board to see if there were any specific locations I could have earned more points perhaps with a tesuji, joseki, yose or if I had solved a tsumego correctly sometimes I even have to consider a strategic change, what do people who study tsumego do after they lose? Keep doing the same thing they have been doing?

They review the game, looking for any point where they made mistakes. Go into the game analysis forum here. Half those people do tsumego regularly, half don't. They will review in much the same way.

What really baffles me is that you seem to have it out for just tsumego. Why are tesuji problems ok, but tsumego are awful?

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Occupy Babel!

I preface this by saying I group tesuji problems and life-and-death problems and endgame problems together in my head, so if I say tsumego it means all of these.

Every time I would play a game and my teacher, Feng Yun, reviewed it, she would point out at least two places where I could have been sharper (killed a group, saved my group, saved a move, etc.) had my tsumego skills been sharper. This is why I consider tsumego so important: even in the games of a mid-dan, the amount of potential for point gain just for solving a single tsumego problem is enormous. Besides that, in my own reviews, I usually look at joseki choice, a few strategic things in the opening (how could I have prevented that moyo from happening? was my count here accurate?). I dislike the endgame, and usually count before it begins so I know how much I have to try. My endgame isn't bad when I count everything, but it's kind of boring.

I don't think it's the best choice to study tsumego to the exclusion of everything else, but I think that that's only one step below the ideal way to study, and studying strategy to the exclusion of everything else is far more detrimental to your growth as a player. If your opponent doesn't know a shred of strategy, but has tsumego skill, the game can be reversed in his favor in an instant if he manages to kill your group or make life in a place he should not rightfully be able to live in.

Lobotomy in the other thread said something to the effect, of burn all strategy books, then Golem7 comes along and says essentially the same thing, and the community didn't feel the need to say anything, so I assume if you want to talk strategy you have to repeatedly hammer the tsumego nuts until they wonder if they ought to be playing go at all. I mean not just get a few extra points by ignoring a failed threat, I mean suffocate their eye space, and hane on their liberites, and just kill their groups .

Strategy's hard, and a lot of it depends on finicky details (if your strategy depends on some joseki, the right moves in joseki in turn depend on the details of some complicated corner fight, etc.). It also depends on positional judgment a lot of the time, and it's really hard to explain positional judgment: I can feel the difference between two positions, but I can't really explain the real reason why I think one is better. I can find some reasons to tell people, but the real reason is hard to pin down and it's a matter of feeling for me. I would just rather not talk about it, and focus on life and death, because life and death is a surefire way to get strong, and you can invent the strategy yourself if your life and death is good.