I remember looking through the book "The Best Game Records of 2009" and thinking that there seem to be a lack of 5-3/3-3/5-4 points. It's only 50 or so games so not much of a sample size, but (if I remember correctly) I think every game but one started with the first four moves at either 3-4 or 4-4 in each empty corner. The game that didn't start in the four corners had played all of them by move 9 and also stuck to 3-4/4-4 points. I was a bit dissapointed to be honest.

I agree. Pros only have a certain amount of time to study, and fashion does have an influence on that. So they wind up studying what is popular and also playing it themselves rather than trying to develop some idiosyncratic style.

I think that the 5-4 and 5-3 went away for different reasons than the 3-3 did. Their history is different: the 5-4 and 5-3 have been played for centuries, whereas the the 3-3 in an empty corner really seemed to be something popularized by Go Seigen and contemporaries in the shin fuseki period.

The innovation of playing symmetrical points (4-4 and 3-3) as part of the opening allows both white and black to play a faster opening, which was something of interest to Go Seigen. 5-4 and 5-3 are very similar in that:

a) They both leave the 3-3 open.
b) They both are asymmetrical points, and therefore have a preferred direction of play.
c) They both aim for influence.
d) They both have rich complicated variations of joseki.

I think these plays lost out somewhat as the 4-4 and fast openings in general become more popular. Previously, it was common to start a fight and maybe leave an empty corner open for longer. Given the opening theory of the time, this made sense: a corner has two big moves that can be regarded as miai, right? So if you are thinking that way, playing the first move in an empty corner isn't so urgent. When it becomes viable to play a symmetrical point, however, the theory has to change and filling up those corners soon becomes more important. This decreases the popularity of asymmetrical points in two ways: first, the more symmetrical points played, the fewer asymmetrical ones. That's obvious. What is less obvious is that when you have information such as positions on the board before an empty corner is played, it may be possible to play a better move than 4-4, using that information. Yilun Yang has several examples in his books and teaching to this effect. Players in the 19th cenutry and earlier took advantage of this, but fast openings reduced the opportunity somewhat, and the 5-3 and 5-4 are casualities of this change, at least in part.

The story behind the demise of 3-3 is harder to grasp. It may have hung on longer because certain very strong players such as Sakata, Rin Kaiho and Cho Chikun used it. Saying "it is not developable to the center" is kind of a vague statement. It is not as if there is a clear tactical refutation. We have not solved Go, after all. It may come back into fashion.

But I have also been told by pros that 3-3 as black is a casuality of high komi as well. But this shouldn't effect 3-3 as white as much, should it? That part I really don't grasp.

My best guess is that the 3-3 demise may be related to another change in modern Go: shorter time limits. Shorter time limits leave less time for the kinds of accurate positional judgements required in close games like the ones where players take territory and don't fight as much. Cho Chikun gives examples of 3-3 openings in his book where he states that it will likely lead to a long and close game.

The other points may come back into fashion if some killer opening is invented that uses them. In modern Go, there aren't so much corner josekis as patterns that relate very directly to the whole board situation.

I should mention that a number of players I talked to after Mr. Kim's lecture were disappointed and dismayed. They felt it was pointless to talk to mostly kyus and low dans about the difference between 5.5 and 7.5 komi. It is not as if, armed with this information, I can take white now and quietly wear down in the endgame any opponent that plays the sanrensei, after all.

In a sense the 3-3 point is "fast" because it finishes with the corner in one move. The problem with it for development is that it is low and territorial so it takes more moves to build a moyo-like position from it. I'm sure there is no "tactical" refutation of it but dislike for it is rather based on "feeling".

As for the 2 point difference between 5.5 and 7.5 komi, of course it isn't tactically significant for the vast majority of amateurs. Same goes for non-joseki moves that lose one or two points compared to correct play. However, if you make ten of these small losses it becomes a big loss. Never-the-less, I think we weak players should pay attention to subtle issues like this even if we aren't capable of capitalizing on them. Psychologically I would feel influenced by knowing that I had an advantage in komi.

It's nice to note that Cho Chikun was famous for playing very slowly in the opening, and I've heard that it said that this fits well with an amashi strategy (Sakata also played amashi).

Of course Go Seigen also played 3-3 points, and criticized Cho for playing so slowly in the opening. So perhaps we can't overgeneralize.

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