I read somewhere on senseis (can't find it now) that the stats on joseki are:

3-4 47%
4-4 46%
3-5 2%
4-5 2%
3-3 2%
other 1%

well, what's wrong with 3-5 and 4-5?

Nothing.

They are less flexible. They force you to decide/declare your intentions sooner.

I don't think either is true. Excerpts from Takao:
With the boom in the star point, the 5-3 and 5-4 are played less than before,
but they retain a stubborn popularity because of their rich variety.

Like the 3-4 point, [the 5-3] has the potential to make a small-knight enclosure.
Moreover, being located further along the side, it's full of potential for speedy development.
On the other hand, you often end up ceding the corner to the opponent.

As with the [5-3], [the 5-4] emphasizes development along the side;
it is closer to the center, so it is easier to build influence.
Because of these features, players who like thickness and moyos are fond of the 5-4 point.
On the other hand, it is a little slack territorially.

They are further from the corner, and we all know the proverb, "corners, then sides, then centre".

(Shhhh, don't mention the 3-3 point.)

Pros do not play them because they do not win. We amateurs are under no such restriction, so enjoy!

Here is a quick table based on GoGoD (still summer 2012). This summarizes the first play in the 4 empty 10x10 quadrants of a little over 25,000 even games since 2002 (roughly the 6.5 point komi era). The plays are listed by frequency except for the top two lines (because I made a mistake )

What it tells us is (for example looking at the first two lines):
Black played first move on 3-4 a little over 31,000 times, winning 49.7% of those games. Meanwhile White played first move on 4-4 a little over 32,500 times, winning 51.4% of those games.

Plays on 3-4 and 4-4 accounted for some 98,000 out of 100,000 corners. Also shown is the difference in winning percentage for other choices compared to the best performer for Black (3-4) and for White (4-4). Note that any single game combines a variety of first plays and that the first play does not, in fact, determine the nature of the joseki played. For example if Black plays on 3-4, a White approach on 5-3 that is ignored by Black may turn the corner into a 5-3 joseki. Such distinctions are completely missing from this analysis. As always YMMV.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

I have been seeing the 3-5 in top level pro play more recently. I am not 100% sure but the reasoning I see is as a variation to the orthodox fuseki, which is popular. IE if white(black) really wants to make an enclosure with out a preemptive approach from a direction that allows black to create a large moyo framework he can open at 3-5, black can still approach of course, but it won't work as well with his other stones.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B A normal fuseki or not?
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$$ | . . . 2 . . . . . , . . . . . 1 . . . |
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$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . , 3 . . |
$$ | . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Now black can't play the mini-chinese approach move at 5.

Thank you for the stats, quite interesting.

However, I suspect there's more to the correlation than causation. I think 3-5 and 4-5 also tend to be associated with fighting games and may thus be used more frequently by weaker players who would prefer decide the game on a fight rather than play a calm game and lose by a few points. Therefore the lower winning ratio could reflect this tendency rather than inherent weakness/difficulty to play.

I suspect also that as ez4u mentioned, a lot of the time these positions come up through 3-4 > approach > tenuki, so that the relevant joseki are more common than a glance at the first move would indicate.

When the root of the tree is 4-5 or 5-3, no pro can read all of the branches.
I suspect that it is 50% fashion and 50% Alguins flexibility idea.

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I suspect that the 5-3 and 5-4 moves are more likely to lead to complicated variations. For example, if you like to play the taisha then you should play the 5-3.

Since, this thread was started, I have had several games against the 3-5, is it really good for fighting?

Not without opponent cooperation, but this is a casefor all joseki with good fighting potential. All you need is to learn few peacefull variations and laugh. Chances for punishment thx to your dodge/slack moves in amateur games is rly small.

Dave, your results surprise me in one way: I thought Black's win rate in modern play is greater than 50%. Do you know if that's right, and if so, what makes your results look different?

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Occupy Babel!

I don't have a source off hand, but I think I had read somewhere to that after komi went up from 5.5 to 6.5/7.5 it went from black winning slightly more to white winning slightly more.

Mef is correct. The sample I used was 25K+ games from 2002. Black winning percentage was 49.1%.

A quick (actually slower ) check using the real komi (sgf KM tag) shows:


There seems to be a complication however. Note the combination of different komi = Japanese and Korean games on the one hand (e.g. 6.5) and Chinese games on the other hand (e.g. 3.75). I always use the period since 2002 as proxy for the "6.5 komi era". However, the 3.75 Chinese komi is the equivalent of 7.5. I have seen it written that under Chinese counting there is no difference between '3.25' and '3.75'. The stats say that there is a difference between '6.5' and '3.75' though!

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Actually, the reason that the Chinese moved from 2.75 (5.5) to 3.75 (7.5) is because there is usually no difference between 2.75 and 3.25 (due to the score difference almost always being odd). So the difference between 3.25 and 3.75 is in fact quite significant.

Today I have learned something, then. Thanks.

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Occupy Babel!

We know that from time to time there are fads in professional go openings. For example, in the late 1970's into the 80's there was a big fad for the Chinese style opening, and I have the impression, not backed up by any data base research, that in that period Black had a significantly high win percentage. However, eventually people learned how to play White against that opening and the Black win percentage dropped. In fact, now the so-called high Chinese style is completely out of fashion. Same thing with the san-ren-sei in its time. Lately the mini-Chinese has been popular. I suspect that these fads start because a few extraordinarily talented players have a lot of success with particular openings so other players imitate. Certainly Takemiya was very successful with the san-ren-sei, and Kato with the Chinese style. Anyhow, my question would be whether win/loss statistics are vulnerable to bias due to these fads. It might happen that an opening, like CHinese style, becomes popular and successful but once people figure out how to play against it it isn't played as much and the win/loss imbalance doesn't get corrected.

Back to the original question... Nothing is wrong with them.

Winning percentages might be lower, but that is explainable because amateurs aren't nearly as good as pros at understanding and using thickness, which means it's harder to catch up when cash-players exploit the opening's weakness.

But if your goal is to learn, then these are great opening moves. Plus tey are fun. I play 3-5 in every even game. Of course, I suck at go.

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- Brady
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