Life In 19x19

I am looking for a good way to study joseki. I have 38 basic joseki from the elementary go series which I really like. Yet I find the joseki in that book to be a bit aged. I want a resource where I can learn and memorize for instance the 50-100 most commonly used joseki. I feel with that amount I can get a good grip on the game.

Any ideas of what resource to use or how to do it would be greatly appreciated

I'd recommend Takao Shinji's 21st Century Dictionary of Basic Joseki published by Kiseido.

Yilun Yang's Whole Board Thinking in Joseki is excellent but it only treats 3-4 point joseki.

How would you go about studying Joseki gowan? Just try to memorize each joskei one after another or what?

Like gowan, I also recommend Takao's joseki dictionary (and its predecessor, Ishida's.)

Subotai wrote:Just try to memorize each joskei one after another or what?

That's the beginning of one particular approach. Usually, this works for very young children -- example: they can soak up thousands of new Chinese characters; moreover, it becomes part of their "permanent" memory -- they will be able to retain and recall most of the information for a very long time. Of course, even "just" memorizing tens of thousands of josekis and variations is only one level of understanding. Also, this path becomes more and more difficult as the starting age increases. How well do you think you can memorize thousands of variations, much like the tens of thousands of basic corner life-and-death shapes ? Have you tried anything like it before?

Of course, in decreasing levels of "goodness", study with:

• a good pro who is also a good teacher;
• a high level amateur who is also a good teacher;
• misc. suggestions in this thread.

Subotai wrote:I am looking for a good way to study joseki.

Did you check this topic :
"www.Ootakamoku.com - Modern fuseki practice" http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 70#p155770
so fun and addictive way to play with joseki

Unless you really like studying joseki. I think learning them without context is a little bit extraneous. Though when I was learning Chinese I found memorizing the 300 most common characters with flash cards, to be useful. However Go isn't like chess, where you need to memorize many opening lines. You really just need to figure out which joseki go with your favorite Fuseki. If you want to memorize something memorize yose.

Memorizing joseki is like memorizing all the techniques used by Casanova. If you don't really know what you are doing then you won't get too many people excited. Understanding and having a feel for the right move is what is important and this only comes with time.

So sure, go ahead and memorize a few basic techniques. But don't expect it to change your life until you really understand what is going on.

gowan wrote:
Yilun Yang's Whole Board Thinking in Joseki is excellent but it only treats 3-4 point joseki.

I have these two books. Reading the intro carefully, you might see that they were to be just the start of a longer series with the later books considering other than 3-4. But those have not been written (not AFAIK).

Unfortunate, since I think this is the only proper way to learn joseki, not in the vaccum ignoring the rest of the board.

SmoothOper wrote: If you want to memorize something memorize yose.

Just to be sure, what do you mean by memorizing yose ? they are each time so different to me

Subotai wrote:How would you go about studying Joseki gowan? Just try to memorize each joskei one after another or what?

I don't think I worked at memorizing joseki. I played a lot and if things didn't turn out the way I wanted I'd look it up. Things seemed to stick in my memory because I could relate them to what I was thinking in the game. I also play through a lot of pro games, noticing how they handle corner sequences. If I don't understand what's going on I look it up or play around with it to see what happens. The most important thing is to try to understand the meaning of the moves, not just the sequence. If you just memorize without understanding you won't know what to do if your partner deviates from your memorized sequence. Finally, a sequence of moves that is called joseki in a joseki dictionary, like Takao's which I recommended above, may actually turn out to be bad for one side depending on the rest of the board. Yang's book gives you a feel for this sort of thing.

Addendum: There's a catch-22 aspect of learning joseki. You can't understand joseki without having a general knowledge of go, but you can't get a general knowledge of go without understanding joseki. I think it's an iterative sort of thing. You learn some go (shape, tesuji, thickness vs. territory, etc.), then you learn some joseki, then you learn more general go, ... Repeat indefinitely

If you're interested in learning modern joseki in context, then you might consider picking one or two contemporary pros and learning all the joseki they use by studying their games.

That won't work. It is much more complicated than that. You really do need to learn the underlying concepts and the way that the rest of the board affects what is or is not "joseki".

The moves the pro makes when he or she is playing another pro (when he or she is responding to the "pro move" made by the other pro) is one problem. But that leaves you helpless against an opponent who has not made the correct move. Not correct in the sense bad because too greedy under the circumstances. Not correct because there it leaves a defect that must be exploited immediately or that too ambitious move becomes a very good one.

In other words, you have to learn why each move in a joseki sequence is the correct move, not just memorize what the move is.

Mike Novack wrote: In other words, you have to learn why each move in a joseki sequence is the correct move, not just memorize what the move is.

I think the point was see the joseki played by the modern pro move and then look that up in a reference book that has the explanations.

oren wrote:I think the point was see the joseki played by the modern pro move and then look that up in a reference book that has the explanations.

Most likely the explanations will not have the exact board position in discussion,
so there could be some unanswered questions, from a few to many.
This is often what happens. Much work to follow.

gowan wrote:There's a catch-22 aspect of learning joseki. You can't understand joseki without having a general knowledge of go, but you can't get a general knowledge of go without understanding joseki. I think it's an iterative sort of thing. You learn some go (shape, tesuji, thickness vs. territory, etc.), then you learn some joseki, then you learn more general go, ... Repeat indefinitely

Exactly. Rinse and repeat.