I guess I would expect the selection of most joseki would be left to the student to solve much the way a mathematician would leave certain basic proofs for the student to solve(ie you have book and an Internet look it up), the core expected competency would then be Fuseki and whole board development. Though, I expect the economies of teaching would lead to a teachers to teach the minimum necessary to keep the student coming back for more lessons.

Not to nitpick, but I run into that before, and my question is: what does it mean when a joseki is 'old'?
Does it mean its bad? If so, what is the refutation or the reasons behind it being bad?
Or is it merely out of fashion, but still perfectly sound?
And does any of that really matter at our level?

Sorry for all these questions, not trying to be difficult, it really interests me.
I notice people often say 'old' joseki, but not usually 'bad' joseki or not-joseki. So what does 'old' really mean, and why should we care?

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It's a fine joseki and still works, but the result is not the optimum, the reason is that after white makes he extension he gets a decent amount of territory while black is relatively overconcentrated and w/o much territory. his only saving grace is that he has sente

in a more broad sense, "old" just means there are better more efficent plays than that one

learning josekis can help your fundamentals since they typically are just good efficient shape
whether you should memorize them or not depends on your teacher. both schools of thought that i've heard have good reasons for why you should or shouldn't, but i wouldn't say it is the single roadblock to improving

Speaking about a particular joseki like



means to ignore the fundamentals: what are the amounts of territory, how do the influences compare, why is good connection and eye shape (not) called overconcentrated?



A teacher can / should be able to provide a selection if the student wants to learn it from the teacher.



Some teachers like to keep up with every recent fashion. Other teachers improve their knowledge without having to follow every fashion. Either way can be very time-consuming, so every teacher has to make some compromises, because he cannot have enough time to follow both approaches equally exhaustive.



Then you read the wrong dictionaries. (Some dictionaries simply teach mainly the new. If so, they should mention when exceptionally some variation is old.)



The particular joseki is not "old" in the sense of "outdated", but nowadays also newer, alternative variations and lines of reasoning have been developed. (And there are the territory fundamentalists, who compare only the territory.)



No problem either. The reader must learn to develop his understanding from representative selections. (It is HIS problem if he does not do this, or even fails to acquire knowledge necessary for knowing how to do it. It is not the DICTIONARY'S fault.)



I would ask for more from the teacher than just opinion. If he doesn't know all josekis by heart, he must be able to explain how to understand by reasons and compare variations.

No, he actually doesn't have to. That's not a must for me.

It seems that Robert does not distinguish between 'Understanding' and 'Application' of fundamentals.

Having 'Making too many blunders' in a list to indicate 'Half understanding of fundamentals' is equally wrong and ridiculous as having a proverb 'Avoid bad moves!'. Not every error can be labelled under 'Ignoring the fundamentals'. Otherwise, everything would be fundamentals.
I would say nobody gets to 1 Dan without knowing the fundamentals. Even the majority of 5 kyus know the fundamentals.

Playing strength = Knowledge of Fundamentals + Application of Fundamentals + Reading + ?

(? = Avoid blunders, ... )

It seems that Robert has instead defined something like this:
Understanding of Fundamentals = Playing strength - Reading

You ask why? Simple: If someone has a hammer, every problem looks like a nail to him!

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

Wrong.



Why do you think that it is wrong? Don't you think that avoiding blunders belongs to the fundamentals? It is mostly a fundamental aspect of psychology.



Indeed. Treating a truth only as a proverb misses the importance of this universal principle. (I could agree to something else, if you should mean it: that the principle alone does not specify in detail which are the bad moves.)



It depends on what ARE the fundamentals. If you stop including things at "a single empty intersection is insufficient for independent life", then each 1d knows all the fundamentals. If you include knowledge about choosing three space pincers, then most 1 dans do not know all the fundamentals. Part of them knows these, but then not other fundamentals of a comparable level and relevance.



As before.



"?" = intermediate and advanced knowledge above the fundamentals etc.

I think this hits the nail on the head quite nicely! However, RJ is not wrong about dan players lacking some fundamentals.

One good example, I think, is the principle I know as Five Alive (in close fighting, if a group has five liberties it can probably be left to fend for itself for the time being; with fewer liberties it needs urgent attention if you want to save it). I've only come across this in Korean (except that Bruce Wilcox discovered it independently, and I don't rule out the possibility it was imported into Korea by him), but there is a range of similar rules of thumb which we appear not to know.

Victor Chow, a very strong player from Guilin, told us once at a London Open that Chinese kids like him were taught these principles and he was astonished that Europeans did not know about them. He demonstrated some, and they were certainly new to all of us there, and different from anything else we'd seen. He promised to write them up for us, but (because he was based in South Africa) it never really came to fruition. I have a recollection that he may have written up a couple for the BGJ or, much more strongly in my memory, someone in our group wrote them up.

I have a feeling that Shikshin père may have learnt or discovered similar techniques.

I share your view that RJ may be trying to clear the jungle with a sledgehammer, but his quest is still worth encouraging: there's gold in them thar hills.

From the wonderful song "El Condor Pasa", "I would rather be a hammer than a nail yes I would, I really would..."

This discussion reminds me of my last in person playing experience. While I was playing the one of tournament facilitators came up and kibitzed, "what are you doing, don't do that", well I patently ignored his comment, after a while he said something like "Ah a strong fundamental player.", then walked off. I won the game by a substantial margin.

Its been my experience that 1 dan's just don't get enough beat downs, since they tend to accumulate at the top of the local club circuit without much competition. The lack of downward pressure leading to a situation where they don't get schooled in certain fundamentals, and sort of assume that they have mastered all the basics, at the same time they tend to discourage styles of play that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable for them in their subordinate ranks. For example strongly insisting on traditionally placed handicaps, based on their "strength", of opinion, about knowing what it is the best most interesting game.

Someone kibitzed during a tournament game??

It's okay, it was a 1d.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

It was OK, it was an informal tournament between two clubs, though it was kind of weird.

This reminds me of a story I heard. When Cho Hunhyun visited the UK about ten years ago he played some simultaneous games. One of these was a three-stone game against Matthew Macfadyen 6d. As usual Matthew tried to kill things. He succeeded in making a huge semeai, which he won, but in the process Cho squeezed the outside and ended up dominating the rest of the board and won comfortably.

This is wrong, bad, annoying, incorrect, not true and false in so many ways!

Yes, the literature is littered with phrases like "we can't just play joseki because it is one" because you always have to choose an appropriate way to play. When you minimized the number of joseki you know, you will be most likely the kind of player, who will repeat the same thing over and over again regardless of circumstances, because due to your "interest in fuseki" also known as subscription to some fashionable whole board sequence, you avoided facing the choices that make up good opening play. That is exactly what studying joseki provides, it gives you a whole repertoire of different moves to think with and makes you realize that you indeed have the choice at every step. I am convinced people are relying too much on (some few) joseki because they know too few of them to begin with and thus never arrive at the point where they realize "I could play completely different moves here and still be perfectly fine."

And finally, who are you to teach professionals fundamentals?

Thanks for reading. I did login just to write this rant.

If you don't understand any Fuseki, you might be inclined to follow fads that you don't understand, thus demonstrating your ignorance of the finer points in whole board development, and joseki selection, and make statements like, "Knowledge of Fuseki are just fads". I personally don't jump on the Fuseki band wagon, and I kind of wish people wouldn't play, Nirensei quite so much, though I get pretty comfortable playing against it.

What's wrong with Nirensei now?!?

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His statement above suggests that the Nirensei doesn't allow him to demonstrate his knowledge of the finer points in whole board development, and joseki selection.

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Go is such a beautiful game.

I am puzzled. How can you achieve a better understanding of joseki choice, when you reject studying joseki to begin with?

Each Fuseki requires some knowledge of certain joseki. You don't have to learn all joseki or all Fuseki.