In viewtopic.php?p=139120#p139120 foeZ asks how to study the Ishida (Dictionary of Basic Joseki). So here is an answer:

Decide how much and what you want to get out of the Ishida:
a) comprehensive understanding
b) rote memorisation of many josekis
c) understanding of only those josekis having occurred in your games

(c) is as easy as limited in use. Just look up the occurred joseki. You are not interested in deeper understanding, so it does not matter that you do not get it beyond a bit related tactics.

As everybody knows, (b) does not work. You can learn 500 josekis only to forget them all within 2 months. Then you start learning them by heart again. IOW, you are just wasting your time. (The proverb even claims you would become 2 stones weaker.) Memorisation of many josekis works only together with a thorough understanding.

This leaves (a) as the only fruitful choice. So now I discuss how to acquire a comprehensive joseki understanding by relying on also studying the Ishida. You have several choices:

1) study the Ishida only
2) study also conceptual literature
3) study also (professional, amateur, your) games and databases
4) discuss with other players

(4) is self-explaining. (3) can be used to see strategic choice in global context, tactical variation and modern developments newer than the Ishida. These aspects can be studied by spending much time (months of additional work) with exploring games or databases, or by using such books (2) that already present the results of such work.

Suppose you study the Ishida only (1). Necessarily, this involves drawbacks: modern variations are missing, strategy is mostly missing, you need to reinvent a lot of go theory by yourself. Now, it is possible; I have done it. You need to spend about 3 or 4 months day and night reading the Ishida thrice, while learning as many variations as possible, develop the related understanding and exploring the most relevant go theory for that purpose. During several subsequent years, then you can reinvent lots of additional, related and often necessary go theory. Well, you can if you have significant autodidactic strength.

A few decades ago, there was little choice but to follow this path, take pride in reinventing and rediscovering all the necessary go theory and so to enable oneself to develop the comprehensive understanding required for memorising joseki or, in the long term, develop an ability to reinvent joseki-like variations ad hoc during one's games. Nowadays, why would you choose this path of torture? (Except that pretending the Ishida to be an exciting crime novel "Which group dies first?" can provide some entertainment.) As conceptual joseki literature informs you, understanding involves

- joseki definition
- choice of first corner move
- opening theory
- empty corners theory
- reasons for choosing corner enclosures, approach moves, pincers, extensions and checking extensions
- symmetries
- move types and stone meanings and reasons for choosing them
- development directions and reasons for choosing them
- methods of tactical reading
- knowledge of shapes, their behaviour and meanings
- perception of strategic objects
- strategic concepts, all their aspects and reasons for how to apply them: connection, cut, gote / sente, aji, efficiency, influence, thickness, stability, urgency, investment, tenuki, options, flexibility, mobility, forcing, haengma, timing, fighting, semeai, invasion, reduction, ko, exchange, sacrifice etc.
- analysis methods, their theory and application: quiescience, current territory, concepts related to values per move, local positional judgement, global positonal judgement, tewari, joseki evaluation theory and their aspects
- joseki types and related strategic choices and reasons
- strategic lines
- group meanings
- strategic choices (theory and application) and strategic planning
- strategic joseki choice tree
- etc.

In other words, whenever you see a variation in the Ishida, analyse for each of its moves and the resulting position(s) all the relevant aforementioned aspects. The more you analyse the more you will understand. Always you must study the basics: connection, life, stability, exchanges, stone difference, sharing of territory versus influence, development directions, strategic choices, aji, equal / slightly / greatly one-sided result.

The alternative is, OC, to study also conceptual literature (2). This should be both books specific for joseki theory and books for other fundamentals go theory, such as books about fighting or opening. Concerning the former, my Joseki books (Vol. 1 Fundamentals, Vol. 2 Strategy, Vol. 3 Dictionary, which is strategic-choice-orientated) cover all the aforementioned aspects of go theory. Among the English literature, there is also the following book with a noteworthy bit of joseki related go theory: Fundamental Principles (reasons for choosing corner enclosures, approach moves, pincers; efficiency). Not explicit go theory, but problems implying strategic choices during the early opening: Whole Board Thinking in Joseki.

Working through a coordinates-orientated tactical dictionary (such as the Ishida) requires also to inform yourself about the inherent strategic choices, understanding of evaluation, modern variations, noticing outdated variations and overview on relative frequencies and practical relevance of the variations. You can get that by (2) combined with modern dictionaries. If you want to repeat or enhance their already done work, you can also use databases.

Maybe, most important of all, you need great motivation for studying josekis well: they are a microcosm for go theory. Studying josekis can be your chance to explore go theory broadly and therefore improve a lot. (1) is the slow approach, (1) and (2) combined or any modern dictionary/ies and (2) combined are the faster approach, because you do not need to waste time for rediscovering and reinventing all the aspects of go theory.

Do not complain about needed study time. There are (too) many josekis and there are many aspects of go theory. Surely, it requires some time to learn all of that. Be patient and think in terms of months rather than hours. However, do not waste months (b), but spend them wisely (a).

I'm not totally convinced that (b) doesn't always work. It may be possible that enough of (b) could eventually (albeit possibly inefficiently) lead to (a).

Of course, (a) is desirable, whatever way you can achieve it.

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be immersed

I primarily use (c). When I misplay a joseki because I don't know it, and then I get punished, that is the perfect time to learn the correct variations. The recent pain makes remembering much easier.

Last week I lost to a KGS 3d, partially due to a pincer joseki error. So I looked it up. We played again yesterday, and he played the same pincer. This time he made the joseki error, and fell behind.

TLDR: learning joseki in context is much easier

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

Completely agree. The way to get familiar with a completely foreign concept is to play with it lots. In the case of joseki, that means playing lots of them despite not understanding them very well. If there was a way to get from beginner to understanding joseki without passing through this memorised-but-poorly-understood stage, I'd love to hear about it!

The purpose of this stage is not 'to memorise without understanding', but is to acquire understanding WHILE OR BEFORE memorising.

I am not sure how practical that is. What you says seems to assume acquisition of (sufficient? comprehensive?) understanding based solely on research without any practical experience with the pattern. I am not sure that actually ever happened to anybody.

In my experience, the proces goes through following steps:
1. Look at a pattern
2. Acquire some understanding through theoretical analysis (thinking, research, examples, etc. - dry run, no playing)
3. Apply the pattern (which assumes memorizing it in step 1 or 2)
4. Acquire further understanding through practice (i.e. using the pattern in your own games and observing what happens)
5. Go back to #2, rinse and repeat

With each iteration hopefully yielding deeper and deeper understanding.
Complete understanding might or might not come with enough iterations. Most likely it will never come, even for very simple patterns.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Bantari, I am not denying the usefulness of practical experience.

Pattern or understanding first? With iteration, combination etc., it is of only academic interest whether one studies either a second before the other. It pretty much amounts to a simultanous process.

My point was that it is very hard, if not impossible, to gain understanding without application - only by theoretical study, so to say. Therefore, you have to a certain extent memorize the pattern *without* (sufficient) understanding so you can apply it to gain (more) understanding.

I am sort-of nit-picking here.
In principle, we are pretty much in agreement, I think.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I feel it can happen both ways. When you practice based on theoretical study, your efforts seem somewhat more... directed, maybe? But with practical experience, you can identify nuances that you wouldn't have thought of with theoretical study... But you might do so in a roundabout way, without the direction you have from theory.

_________________
be immersed

In theory, practice makes perfect. In practice, it doesn't.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

It is hard without theory.
It is of intermediate difficulty with weak theory.
It is easy with good theory.



You speak of pattern. Why not speak of sequence, variations and decisions.