is a textbook example of a mistake in the direction of play. That's a bit of a pun, since an entire chapter in The Direction of Play is devoted to explaining why Q5 is the correct move in this situation. Also, even if your goal is to play a wedge I don't understand why you'd choose to play high. Generally the purpose of a wedge is to make a strong solid group separating your opponents two stones. Playing high seems antithetical to this since it cannot easily make a base.

Your comment at move 23 is also a little confusing to me. Low stones by their very definition have less potential than high stones so I usually don't feel any great need to reduce them early in the opening.

I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment at 28. Kicking seems to let white off easy since it allows him to extend and live without too much difficulty in your sphere of influence (W32 seems like a mistake though). White also still has the opportunity to reduce your corner by playing at the 3-3 after he's settled his group. I think your wall is a little too far away to successfully pincer white in this case. Instead the one space low pincer seems ideal. If white takes the corner you can block at D17 and seal him into the corner while building a strong all facing your K16 stone which seems great for black. If white jumps out at E14, you get to play F16 anyway but now white has no base and is on the run.

The idea of a split is to keep the stones of white flat and seperated, i.e. white does not get any (3-stone) framework on its side and even if white approaches the split its corner will be weak and not settled at all. If you approach immediately with Q5 White - with the most common joseki - will get solid territory and sente! I believe in this strategy, it made me jump from 1k to 1d and so far the results are encouraging in that I do not see fundamental flaws in the strategy to split immediately, even in this fuseki, though very good players might see those. So, I am aware of the fact I play vanilla here^^.



In this case high seems more natural. Because you gotta understand: If you play a high wedge then you will not make a safe base and territory, but you will also not be in danger to get pressured from above and will have an easy time to run out or creating center moyos.



Well, if White gets R14 then it will have a nice fraemwork. I wanted to prevent that and at the same time extend.



That makes sense it's just I saw many pro games with similiar patterns and basically no pro pincered, they all kicked. With a low pincer white would jump into the corner getting safe territory and sente. When you kick, things stay more open to development. Yes, 3-3 is still open but the white group is also still attackable in various way.

Splits I think are fine, you don't make much territory (so they are kind of small at the end), but they limite the development of the other guy in the splitting side, so if you have good timing you can limite him, and at the same time form a sanransei to fight in your side, as a strategy I think it works fine.

I think we as amateurs can not limite our fuseki to professional standards, we can mess around and still be fine, professionals as far I know tend to play common things to keep control of the flow of the game, not because they are the better things in all aspects, but because they know what will come from that. A master like Go Seigen knew this, you can see how he criticize some of the most used moves just to find some new variations or stuff.

Also I found 23 a little weird, I would have do the Saransei inmediately. In fact I think you can just jump from 24 and then split, or tenuki and split at 24, since the contact overhand was a little weird. Why I found 23 weird? Because you can always do an attachment and then a crosscut to develop a group inside that low framework, or you can Shoulder hit and limit the development.

At 37 I think the double hane in E11 was more important than the right side, to develop quickly center thickness



Take my ideas with a grain of salt, I'm just a weakish player anyway.