Part of the problem, IMHO, is the fact that you are playing mostly 4-4 josekis. We all had this problem, I think. We get a lopsided view of joseki. If you play 3-4 or 3-3 or maybe even 5-3 in addition to the 4-4, I think you will learn a lot more about what stones do in the corner, and where they do it.

If your opponents will allow it, play with some of your handicap stones on 3-4 or 3-3 points.

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

And don't forget the 3-5, 4-5, and 5-5.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I missed where gowan said that, but they're both right.

I remember trying to learn a few joseki early on, but got completely frustrated when my opponents never responded with joseki moves. And it never seemed to matter if my opponents invaded my corner at the 3-3 point, or if I did theirs -- it never seemed to work out in my favor.

Then I was inspired by one Pro who prided himself on not having ever learned any joseki. That's how I want to play

To this, and similar comments: I am fine with this. It means my opponent has made the first mistake, and I should now have the upper hand. Are games not won by making fewer mistakes than your opponent?

_________________
Regards,

Peter

Then you're looking at it wrongly. I find open space generally easier to deal with than crowded positions.

What choices does black have here? Well...

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . T O . . |
$$ . . . X T . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |[/go]

These moves you happen to know are fine, either because they're joseki or (better) because - as you observed - they give white quite cramped shape and black a powerful hane at the head of two stones.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . T . O . . |
$$ . . T X . . . |
$$ . . T T T . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |[/go]

Moves like this are just kind of pointless. What are they emphasising?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . T T . . . . |
$$ . T . . O . . |
$$ . T . X . . . |
$$ . T . . . T . |
$$ . T T T T T . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |[/go]

Moves further away aren't supporting your corner stone, and it's about to come under severe attack.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . T . . . |
$$ . . . . O . . |
$$ . . . X . T . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . |[/go]

Moves like this are just asking white to push and (later) cut, and so on.

You can see that, really, there aren't that many moves to be played. Locally, there's only one thing to do: if your opponent plays next to a single stone of yours on a diagonal, unless you have a very good reason (because of other surrounding stones), you must attack that stone by contacting it, otherwise on its next move it will attack you by contacting you. Then what? Well, as jts's post points out, the locally good move is usually to withdraw (and you can continue to build your wall or whatever you like); in the case of this joseki, it's forced to slide alongside your stones, and let you hane, which is usually locally good for you as long as it doesn't get cut to pieces. Check that it doesn't. And that's it - you've done enough reading to know that you've probably given up the corner and got a wall. Settle your shape and move elsewhere. It's that kind of semi-intuitive reading that's required in large open positions.

That is indeed true -- my problem was, I didn't know how to punish their joseki mistakes, because I was only familiar with the basic pattern, and didn't understand what each move intended to accomplish.

It does not mean that your opponent has made the first mistake. First, joseki books do not typically show all joseki, of which there are thousands. Second, what is considered joseki changes over time. This means two things. One, your opponent may have found a better play. (Admittedly very unlikely. ) Two, there are likely to be non-joseki plays that, even if they are mistakes, are very small mistakes, that will have little effect upon the game. Third, the choice of joseki matters. You may have played joseki, but have already made the first mistake, by playing the wrong joseki. Fourth, joseki are only roughly equal. Fifth, it is often the case that the right play is to deviate from joseki. There are quite a number of plays that are not joseki, but are situational plays, which are better in certain situations. Your opponent may have made one of these plays, or you may have missed one of them.

Znosko-Borovsky (in chess) says not to make opening plays automatically. If you learn and play joseki, you are playing on auto-pilot. Against weak opponents, you may come out ahead. But it is a bad habit to get into.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Bill's point number 3 seems to be the important one in my view: there are joseki choices that are huge global mistakes.

This is really the point for a beginner: you shouldn't learn and play these awesome equal-result moves, because not all equal results are equal. (That's obvious when you think of what a joseki is, actually: it's sequences of moves that professionals play. Firstly, they are "equal" only in the sense that both black and white think they've got the best result possible. Secondly, professionals still read deeply move-by-move, and will only make a move when it fits the rest of the board: joseki are situational 'from birth'.) You can't avoid learning them through experience, but you should never neglect to read; when you are strong enough to understand a joseki, you'll 'know' it anyway.

I still only understand a few very basic joseki, and even then only locally. I still don't know how to use thickness.

Agree. I found a couple of basic josekis were useful to me as a way of learning how to settle stones.
But 38 Josekis is too complicated for that.

When something comes up in my game and I wonder afterwards what I could have done better, I look it up there:
http://www.brugo.be/

I like it because it says if variations are simples or leading to complications. It also shows wrong moves in red (and rates from small mistakes to big mistakes and how the opponent should respond to the mistake).

That's true too, obviously. The next step is to learn when to use a joseki and when not. But I think not knowing any joseki doesn't protect a DDK from wrong evaluation of the board and mistakes on topics like direction of play. Just getting a feeling for "what do I do if my opponent pincers? Oh, I can invade the corner, never thought of that!" is quite enough at our low level, and for this joseki can kinda help, IMO. It doesn't mean that you're allowed to stop thinking though.

Doh! Indeed I meant this one. Looks like I need more memorization.

I have changed my mind about this. Just because it is not a joseki I recognise, or is not one of the common ones, does not mean it is wrong.

_________________
Regards,

Peter

Actually, this is an interesting example of why we should be very careful not to assume our opponents are making mistakes when they play moves we don't recognise.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ -------------------
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . 2 . 3 . .
$$ |. . 1 , . 4 x . .
$$ |. . . x x . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .[/go]

This sequence is bad, of course, and we might even say it's clearly wrong. White is making bad shape and probably doesn't have any very strong followups. Since he can, he might instead choose moves like the xs.

Now, to back up our initial analysis, we can check a pro game database just to see if it's ever happened. And sure enough, it's practically non-existent, it simply doesn't get played.

Except...4 games. One's an amateur one, so lets ignore it. 3 are by Chen Zude...wait, I know that name. He's pretty famous, what's he doing playing this clearly bad move? Lets look at the games...hmmm...1/3 wins, and none of the results of the corner look great. So what's he doing? Does he have some grand whole-board plan that he thinks this will work in...in all 3 games it's the first corner sequence, so it isn't a direct response to an opponent's joseki unless he's looking to the future. Is he just messing around? Did he lose a bet? He doesn't seem to have persisted with it.

Now, I don't know what the answer is. But it does seem that even though the move isn't joseki and could reasonably be analysed as probably bad just by looking at it, for some reason Chen Zude has played it 3 times and won one of those games against another professional. So in the end, even if the move is terrible, I have to be very careful when saying how bad it really is or how much it affects my winning chances.

Of course we should still aim to analyse our opponents moves and try to find a response that shows it to be poor, but it's always worth being aware that the ways of professionals are deep and mysterious, and even for us amateurs it's nowhere near as simple as not-in-the-book being the same as bad!

For reference, here's one that Chen Zude lost (but only just) against Nie Weiping:

Can you explain why this is so bad? Thanks.

Black gets to make territory while he pushes white to run for his life.
If you read the potential continuations you will see.
If you cannot read it just try it on a board.

ps:

White 'kosumi' was considered joseki a long time in the high-aproach variation, but is now considered
an inferior variation..
=> according to eidogo.

Cheers,
Otenki

Well, as in my post I have to be very careful when saying if it's actually bad or how bad it is. Nevertheless, I think it probably is bad and a group of players encountering it for the first time would probably come to that conclusion.

The big reason is that I'd perceive that white can do better. In this shape, black can just play a jump from the corner:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ -------------------
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . 2 . 3 . .
$$ |. . 1 , . 4 x . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . 5 . . . . . .[/go]

...and what's white going to do? Push from behind at x? Actually, this would end up in a position from another joseki that doesn't come up much...probably because white isn't happy to have pushed from behind.

Alternatively, black can just push up:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ -------------------
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . 2 . 3 . .
$$ |. . 1 , . 4 5 . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .[/go]

And in this case, it feels like white will have a tough time because he doesn't have strength to attack the corner properly - his shape is bad. Lets compare to another shape that's more common:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ -------------------
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . 2 . 3 . 7
$$ |. . 1 , . 6 4 5 .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . 8 . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .[/go]

In a shape like this, white can play the pressing pincer at 8 because he's become stronger in sente. Compare to our non-joseki where black has the vital point at 4 instead of white, making white's shape vitally weaker if black gets a chance to push out.

Black can play differently of course, such as:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ -------------------
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . 2 . 3 8 .
$$ |. . 1 , . 6 4 5 .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . . . . . . . .
$$ |. . 7 . . . . . .[/go]

But then white can live with the move at 8, unlike in the game where he has bad shape and hasn't created a cut in black. I'll note that whilst this is more of a joseki than the bad shape we're discussing, nor is it the most popular sequence around for various reasons. It's a useful comparison that's well studied, though.

Of course, maybe the difference won't come to much. Even if this is bad for white, it likely isn't by a game losingly large amount except for pretty strong players...I know I could certainly contrive to lose the game as black!

So, I say it's bad because I know more common sequences that white could play which lead to a similar but (at least to my initial inspection) better shape for him. I often make this a big theme in teaching, actually, many common mistakes are more clearly mistakes when phrased in comparison to a more enthusiastic move that the opponent cannot resist and so is almost always better.

In simple terms, it's bad simply because it doesn't give white good shape and it asks black to take good shape by pushing up. After that, white doesn't have time to simultaneously make his stones strong and attack something, but if black easily gets strong on both sides then white hasn't gained anything and could have almost certainly done better with slightly different initial moves.

Edit: This feels all a bit confused, partly because I'm trying hard not to make absolute statements because it's a complex position and it's always possible to contrive a situation where the 'bad' move is good or to start a fight that makes the superior position unclear even if there is one. To be concise, I'd say that white's move helps black but does not help white, for all the reasons that this kicking shape (or is this more of a high five?) usually is bad. White retains shape weaknesses, black makes good shape. Whatever white's goal is, he has a better move to accomplish that goal, such as by playing one move further and attaching on top of black.

Imho the best way to get started with joseki is not to.

You will pick up stuff on the way anyways.

Amnal - Were the other examples of that joseki also in relation to a W 3-3 in the facing corner? (It seems suspicious that Chen chose the rare variation in a game with an uncommon fuseki by move ...)

Peter - Rather than saying "there are lots of rare joseki variations, so what I think is a mistake might be a rare joseki", maybe it would be better to say "there is probably more than one tactically sound reply to any move I play, so just because he doesn't play the tactically sound move *I* expected, doesn't mean his reply is a tactical mistake." To me, the first attitude suggests you've memorized one way of playing and you're at sea when you see something new; the second attitude suggests you've studied some principles and patterns and are using those to calculate strong variations. You see the first attitude in games where two beginners have "memorized" a joseki, which they play out in the wrong order, but each player obligingly replies in a way that fixes his opponent's mistakes to arrive at the "right" result. You see it in the common examples (peppernut has kindly provided one! ) of people playing out a "joseki" they learned for the 3rd line on the 4th line, where it makes very little sense. You see it in all my 9x9 games, where I inevitably approach a 3-4 stone from the 2-4 point, under the impression that I'm making a 3-4 approach to a 5-4 stone.

First, as amateurs, we can pretty well take it as bad on an empty board because Chen abandoned it and no other pro took it up.

But let's look at the position itself.

is very solid, and definitely keeps Black separated. From a shape standpoint, however, is well placed to hinder White's eye formation on the side. It is a strike at the jaw of and . OC, has been weakened. But Black can throw it away, and it may still serve as an impediment to White.

Next is where a certain amount of joseki knowledge can come in handy.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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

This is joseki so far. The difference with the first diagram is the exchange of and , which leaves a cutting point at "a", a Black weakness.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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

In a position like this, if Black will not respond at "a", but will extend at , jump to "b", or play somewhere else. The cutting point is gone forever.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

The other two examples both have a 4-4 in that corner. The other corners are also different.

I do think this is rather interesting. There's little doubt that both conventional and accepted wisdom would say this move is bad, but what did Chen Zude see in it?

He looked into the future and decided to troll L19.