I was wondering why josekis are everywhere for people to learn but why a comprehensive list for learning how to punish people for deviating from joseki is from what I've seen nowhere to be found.

The easiest answer: if there are thousands of joseki, there are twenty times that many ways to deviate, and even more ways to choose to 'punish' them. So you have a couple of options. First, work on your sense of direction of play and your reading. This will let you have a better idea of what your options are. For example, your reading will let you see "well, I can block here to seal white in or play here to start a fight", and your sense of direction will let you decide what better works with your stones on the board.

As a matter of fact, until you are stronger than me, instead of just learning joseki, I recommend JUST focusing on direction of play/reading decisions in these sorts of situations. Whether or not you know a joseki, these will let you construct something servicable most of the time. Joseki can be a good way to learn what options you have and what shapes are common, but it's easy to use them as a crutch that result in you playing the same half-dozen shapes over and over without learning from it.

If you have a really big problem with a joseki in a game, look it up, but for the most part, joseki mistakes don't need to be punished. A lot of times, it will make a less efficient shape, which will come back to bit your opponent on its own. Generally the times when it can be punished is when it leaves a weakness in your opponent's shape, which is what you can look for.

I can't figure out how to work this thing.

http://www.josekipedia.com/

edit: well I can but not that well.


I've been trying for a long time to figure out direct of play/reading sort of stuff, for instance overplays I don't know how to punish them, I suck at it and figured that learning how to punish people for overplays in deviating from josekis would be a good way to learn it since I can't find a more comprehensive source.

I was wondering why josekis are everywhere for people to learn but why a comprehensive list for learning how to punish people for deviating from joseki is from what I've seen nowhere to be found.

I'm making some assumptions here, but typically the sorts of moves a 20k wants to know how to punish are best covered in problem (life and death or tesuji) books. Most of the material aimed specifically at joseki mistakes is at least SDK level, if not dan level. In other words, you have to be fairly good before you even make the mistakes that joseki material will tell you how to punish. I'd be astonished if you can find material on punishing 20k joseki mistakes. If you're wondering why your opponents never play joseki and how to punish them... the answer is because they're 20k, and the solution is to improve your reading.

For the sake of punishing overplay, countsheep has a series of videos on the subject at http://www.gocommentary.com/ . I don't remember off the top of my head how high the target level is, but they're free and high-quality.

"Punishing" joseki deviations is a very difficult thing because often everything depends on the whole-board situation, it's not just a matter of what's going on with the stones locally. Sometimes following a joseki sequence can be a mistake. This, again, could be the case because of stones some distance from the joseki stones. One of the best books showing how this works is Whole Board Thinking in Joseki by Yilun Yang. Unfortunately these issues are somewhat advanced and so you shouldn't get discouraged if it doesn't make sense to you now. Play a lot of games and, if possible, get them commented on by a stronger player. Look at games between strong players and watch how they make their stones work together. One more thing, sometimes a deviation from a joseki can be a new joseki move, so just because your opponent doesn't play a move you expect, it doesn't mean you can punish your opponent's move. In fact trying to punish it might be an overplay. One of the best ways to handle all this is to try to understand the reason for every move in a joseki. Then, when your opponent deviates from a joseki you may be able to see how your opponent's move failed to do something important. Finally, mistakes in joseki sometimes only lose one or two points or leave a vulnerability that can only be exploited many moves later. Obviously in this case it might be difficult to see how to take advantage.

I was wondering why josekis are everywhere for people to learn but why a comprehensive list for learning how to punish people for deviating from joseki is from what I've seen nowhere to be found.

but I cant find the reasoning or the punishments

Cap races and contact fights are my biggest problem, I can't get enough comprehensive stuff on them. Like this in the second last diagram http://senseis.xmp.net/?4464Enclosure my mind can't process enough of the necessary things to survive. I know that whatever the position I need to stay connected and extend my liberties but the different possibilities are too overwhelming. It's like my mind can't handle it the same as others. These two things, contact fights and cap races are the whole reason I want to know josekis, so I have even a small idea of how to handle them.