How to think about joseki

[tapir]

Joseki is a term that is part of everyday Japanese. The implication is usually "routine", not "correct" or "even". Taking the dog for a walk at 3 pm every day can be called a joseki. The rookie cop who wants to solve a case with his scintillating intellect might be told to do the joseki work first: knock on doors and take statements. When Mihori refers to "Mr Joseki" he is not praising him.

It isn't what I want to read or watch TV shows about, but joseki police work is what solves most cases. I believe "do joseki work" is a good advice to the rookie cop, much better than "do it like Sherlock Holmes" would be.

Honestly, how many amateur players do you know who play obvious, routine moves? I believe most would be a lot stronger if they would do the routine work - check your eyespace, look for the cuts, keep connected, watch out for follow ups - joseki are about that, if you study them. In fact, when I look at professional games, despite obviously lacking the reading muscle to read out what is actually behind the moves, I was most astonished how often 95% of the moves look like routine moves even to me, and likely of the remaining 5% 4% more would look as routine to a stronger player. In my experience the amateurs who study joseki often try to get an early edge, trick the opponent or do fancy stuff. The others are discouraged from studying joseki by a strong anti-joseki bias in the community and ironically end up playing the single line they learned somewhere all the time.

[gowan]

But I do not think for a moment that pros do not go to the woodshed to work on joseki. Certainly Kajiwara, Kitani, and Go Seigen did. Go Seigen's influence on both fuseki and joseki has been enormous. Many of the ideas of modern pro play can be traced back to him.

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Hasn't Go Seigen been saying recently that Japanese go is too much about joseki? Certainly he has been rejecting the long, complicated "joseki" sequences that go on for 40 moves and take up more than a quarter of the board. I like John's idea that fuseki thought drives "joseki" thought. I think the joseki innovators like Kitani and Kajiwara tried new sequences because of fuseki goals rather than just staying even in a corner.

[Knotwilg]

Firstly and superfluously, John, your contributions are surely one of the reasons why people come here. Of course the discussion they elicit is mostly about disagreement or puzzlement - that's the nature of discussion. When I teach, I hope there are many questions. A silent room is unnerving.

Secondly and more to the point, your reflection on how to think about joseki makes it very clear that professional players stay clear of playing routine moves. Since what we call joseki are routine patterns, if they occur in pro games it is because even the search for non-routine moves results in the joseki, which may have been inevitable in the circumstances. Pros do not look for even outcomes: they don't believe in the concept of 100% even and even if something would be 100% even they have no interest in playing it. That's very clear.

The question is now whether amateurs, beginners or advanced students of the game should think the same way about Go. The stronger you are, the more you want to think like a pro. The weaker you are, the more you want to act like a pro. Imitation is a strong technique for improvement and should not be eradicated for the sake of reasoning. Mankind has always relied on imitation because it is so efficient. Imitation is good for beginners but it is of course not good anymore for experts.

As a beginner, you are not equipped to always reason about the best move. Looking for the best move can wear you out. The best strategy is probably to reduce risk. Playing joseki mindlessly is a risk reducing tactic. It is not the most rewarding way to play go, but it is not the worst either. I used to be anti-joseki. Now I consider it to be a starting point for analysis and understanding the implications of deviating from joseki and using such routine patterns in a global context. I think that is a more prosperous path to expert play than reasoning your way through corner patterns time and time again, without taking some food from pros and books. For an amateur, that is.

Finally, I used to take lessons with a Korean 6d amateur who has disappeared from the scene and all social networks. I hope Minue is fine. He taught me "whole board joseki", standard opening patterns which are considered even among pros. This seems to indicate that pro research is about the complete board (probably always has been) like you are advocating, but it also suggests they can still consider something to be an equal outcome. I posted some examples on Senseis: see http://senseis.xmp.net/?StandardOpening1 and up.

[RobertJasiek]

How to think about joseki? Embed them or non-joseki variations in an exhaustive understanding of meanings and purposes of moves, sequences, groups, local and global positional contexts and evaluation and strategic concepts, decisions and planning. All those fundamentals and aspects of strategy are more important than knowing standard sequences by heart. The same order I use in my book series. Nevertheless, fixed representative joseki sequences have their merit: During a game, nobody without at least a solid joseki variations knowledge can work out and reinvent everything afresh. Knowing several hundred basic josekis by heart helps to survive the running clock - not because one would have to play them but because one can choose to play them, variations or entirely unconventional sequences.

[Solomon]

Ever since I've read John's post, when I review games for weaker players I've been very, very cautious not to say something like "This move is wrong, here is the joseki". Instead, I try to analyze each move just as much as I would if I was going over the middle-game and try to make no mention of the terminology altogether. It just doesn't feel right at all to say such a thing after reading his post, and I've noticed that it adds depth and clarity to the review. And not just for joseki, but for the opening as well. A lot of times in the past I would always say something like "This is a common pro opening" or consider a move to be questionable simply because it was an early move and not in a database. I also think this is no good, so I try to explain why an opening move is good, as hard as that is for me (...and maybe that's because I relied more on databases to determine my opening moves instead of my thought process). That's not to say I'm going to be burning my joseki textbooks and uninstalling my database programs, but hopefully I'll be using them as tools to think and question more rather than less.

[Chew Terr]

Ever since I've read John's post, when I review games for weaker players I've been very, very cautious not to say something like "This move is wrong, here is the joseki". Instead, I try to analyze each move just as much as I would if I was going over the middle-game and try to make no mention of the terminology altogether. It just doesn't feel right at all to say such a thing after reading his post, and I've noticed that it adds depth and clarity to the review. And not just for joseki, but for the opening as well. A lot of times in the past I would always say something like "This is a common pro opening" or consider a move to be questionable simply because it was an early move and not in a database. I also think this is no good, so I try to explain why an opening move is good, as hard as that is for me (...and maybe that's because I relied more on databases to determine my opening moves instead of my thought process). That's not to say I'm going to be burning my joseki textbooks and uninstalling my database programs, but hopefully I'll be using them as tools to think and question more rather than less.

Sounds like your new reviewing procedure may help your own game as much as your students'. Perhaps I should try to review more games myself...