Life In 19x19

I might agree if beginner means 20k or weaker but I disagree if 9k is a beginner. And I think you are confused about reading. Plenty of reading goes on in the opening if you are playing it properly. Why else would Cho Chikun use up almost all his time in the opening and why would Kajiwara and Hashimoto Shoji play only nine moves in the first day of play in a two-day game? Yes, a 9k player isn't going to read that much in the opening but a 9k can profitably think about things like if Black plays there White will be able to take a big point. That's reading just as solving a tsumego is reading.

As one who studied fuseki as a beginner, let me caution against it. Instead of losing 100 games quickly, by playing the whole board you'll start winning games before you are ready. Soon you will be playing opponents who are better than you, who will become frustrated by losing to someone who does not know the basics. They will capture your stones and kill your groups, only to win the battles and lose the war. That will greatly reduce their enjoyment of the game. Soon nobody will want to play with you. They will take their stones and go home.

Don't let that happen! Develop the same bad habits as everybody else. Then they will not begrudge you your victories. When you become good enough, you can start making moves they do not understand.



Seriously, there is a saying that there are 360 degrees to the martial arts. There are many paths up the mountain. The place to start is where you are.

Good luck!

gowan wrote:Plenty of reading goes on in the opening if you are playing it properly.

What of that do you think a real world 10k to 20k must do? In particular, what of that is not covered by principles of fundamentals (i.e., not specifically of the opening) such as "Choose the big and valuable.", "Avoid bad contact plays for attack.", "Take valuable shape points."? Among the 58 principles needed to surmount that beginner level, zero are specifically about the opening.

E.g., beginners might protect a gap 1 line wide instead of protecting a gap 10 lines wide. This can be cured by "Choose the big and valuable." applied to gaps.

Bill Spight wrote:there are 360 degrees to the martial arts.

Not quite. Principles a beginner should know are violated only occasionally by real world 5k, only about once in ten games by low dans and practically never (unless in byoyomi) by high dans. The conclusion is: to become strong, a player needs to be aware of those principles. Learning them early is an advantage because it removes obstacles blocking the way to 5k or yet higher.

I'm 4k on KGS and I only know less than 10 basic joseki, and I haven't studied any particular area of the game more than any other (meaning, I haven't overall studied much go ).

Now, I'm planning on spending time with Ishida Yoshio's Basic Joseki I-III, because I feel that my lack of knowledge in the opening and how to respond to "common" moves I don't have any knowledge about are probably my biggest weakness at the moment. In other words, I regret a bit not having spent time for joseki studies earlier and I think it can be quite helpful (as long as it's not just blindly memorizing them).

Like many others in this thread, I do however agree that much earlier than ~10k level the benefit of knowing joseki isn't as great as knowledge of other (more or less) basic stuff.

walpurgis wrote:I'm 4k on KGS and I only know less than 10 basic joseki, and I haven't studied any particular area of the game more than any other (meaning, I haven't overall studied much go ).

Now, I'm planning on spending time with Ishida Yoshio's Basic Joseki I-III, because I feel that my lack of knowledge in the opening and how to respond to "common" moves I don't have any knowledge about are probably my biggest weakness at the moment. In other words, I regret a bit not having spent time for joseki studies earlier and I think it can be quite helpful (as long as it's not just blindly memorizing them).

Like many others in this thread, I do however agree that much earlier than ~10k level the benefit of knowing joseki isn't as great as knowledge of other (more or less) basic stuff.

The debate is over fuseki not joseki. I don't think anyone would disagree with you that knowing complex joseki >10k is inefficient.

Boidhre wrote:
The debate is over fuseki not joseki. I don't think anyone would disagree with you that knowing complex joseki >10k is inefficient.

He has a point though. At a certain point learning fuseki is useless without joseki knowledge to back it up. Understanding the idea behind the low Chinese is useless unless you know the line to punish approaching your 3-4 directly. The same could be said about the Kobayashi. In fact it is very difficult to study fuseki at all without touching on joseki.

speedchase wrote:

Boidhre wrote:
The debate is over fuseki not joseki. I don't think anyone would disagree with you that knowing complex joseki >10k is inefficient.

He has a point though. At a certain point learning fuseki is useless without joseki knowledge to back it up. Understanding the idea behind the low Chinese is useless unless you know the line to punish approaching your 3-4 directly. The same could be said about the Kobayashi. In fact it is very difficult to study fuseki at all without touching on joseki.

This is true however I mean in terms of, say you study the low Chinese, you need to know some basic joseki for dealing with approaching your 3-4 stone directly (when playing other beginners), but this doesn't mean you have to study joseki in depth but know which joseki to choose. You don't necessarily need to know complex joseki to play the low Chinese against other beginners. You'll most likely just get into a fight in the corner, which is fine at this level I think. Further, arguably you learn a lot about the weaknesses of the fuseki you're playing with by making mistakes in the joseki elements.

If things get complicated, well, you fight and learn by doing and at a beginner level this is probably good for you anyway. If you're playing other beginners they are very likely not to know complex joseki anyway and especially not likely to know how to punish mistakes in said joseki, so you're not at a disadvantage not knowing them really.


I mean, speaking as a beginner, fuseki can be fun, so why not study it a bit? I'd agree that spending hours going over variations is probably a waste given your opponents won't play optimally but you can learn something about how to fight, how to form a game plan and how the game flows from early choices from fuseki patterns. Yes you have to touch on joseki but you don't need to study complex joseki in depth to have some fun with something like the low Chinese. A dan or strong sdk player will crush you because you don't know how to punish their approaches optimally sure, but they'll crush you if you keep things simple but a beginner isn't even likely to know how to approach that 3-4 stone.

When I play strong sdk players or dan players and use what I'd consider an interesting fuseki, I get punished but I learn something. Isn't the whole point of playing much stronger players? And really, I, and other beginners, make so many basic errors anyway that 10 point/20 point errors in joseki stages of a fuseki rarely decide the game anyway.

TL;DR: Yes, joseki are important if your opponents are strong, no I don't think they're that important against other beginners.

I think we are seeing a lot of equivocation between studying opening principle and studying macro-joseki, both of which are called "fuseki".