Surprise, surprise
Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 1:49 am
This innocuous-looking position brought up several big surprises for me.
Black to play. Before you go on much further, try to predict Black's next play and, more importantly, say why (just theory - no fancy tactics required).
The first surprise for me was how dismissive author Yokota Shigeaki was of a pincer. Because I was in the midst of reading his book on thickness, I knew what the desired answer was, but I still had an inkling that a pincer was a valid idea - e.g. make territory while attacking. But Yokota said that the answer was as shown below, and that he believed 10 out of 10 pros would play that move.
The reasoning, which he explains convincingly in his book, is that you use 4-star or 3-star thickness (this is 4-star, the top mark) by pushing the opponent towards it. OK, but his 10 out of 10 claim got me to turn to the database and there were a couple of surprises there. First, this position was exceedingly rare. There were just two examples with B to play in almost 100,000 games. That astounded me because the joseki on the left side is/was quite common (though at 345 examples, not as common as I expected - it seems the joseki is a joseki-book favourite rather than an actual-play favourite).
So, straight away, it was impossible to test the 10 out of 10 claim, and on top of that it was wrong anyway because one pro did play the low attachment, but the other one played the attachment on top. Of course, the reasoning must have been the same so that's not a big deal. For the record, though, the pro who couldn't tell margarine from Yokota's butter was Segoe Kensaku, and - if you make what seems a reasonable assumption that White really shouldn't have got himself into the sort of position shown above - the initial "error" was by Go Seigen. Hmmm.
As indirect support for that last point about White having got himself into a dicey position, there were three examples of the above position with White to play and two of them involved amateurs.
There were several more surprises for me, but to mention just one more, White can respond to the low attachment by going into the Avalanche (nadare), i.e. trying to avoid being pushed towards thickness. In that case, Yokota recommended Black choosing a line of the small avalanche joseki. However, he did remark that it might not occur even to most young inseis because none of them seems to know this once popular joseki. And in the one example in actual play where White started the avalanche, the young Chinese player did not use (did not know?) the right line and seemed to me to get a bad result. I suppose that tells us that inseis don't read the same joseki books as us. In fact I don't think they read any joseki books - they are for amateurs. But that's another story.
For reference, in the topmost position, although White should apparently not approach high, it does seem from actual play that he can approach low. In the majority of cases Black still pushes towards the thickness, and there is just one example of a pincer. Also there are instances where White makes a point of not approaching in this area at all.
To go back to the 10 out of 10 claim, as I transcribe games daily I check Yokota's theory against actual pro play, and that has thrown up another surprise. His idea of pushing towards thickness is not new (there are other books saying the same thing - he just does it better) and so I had already registered it. But I had just registered it as one possible strategy out of several, e.g. pincering. In fact, so far, 10 out of 10 pros do seem to follow his theory and it's only amateurs who diverge.
Black to play. Before you go on much further, try to predict Black's next play and, more importantly, say why (just theory - no fancy tactics required).
The first surprise for me was how dismissive author Yokota Shigeaki was of a pincer. Because I was in the midst of reading his book on thickness, I knew what the desired answer was, but I still had an inkling that a pincer was a valid idea - e.g. make territory while attacking. But Yokota said that the answer was as shown below, and that he believed 10 out of 10 pros would play that move.
The reasoning, which he explains convincingly in his book, is that you use 4-star or 3-star thickness (this is 4-star, the top mark) by pushing the opponent towards it. OK, but his 10 out of 10 claim got me to turn to the database and there were a couple of surprises there. First, this position was exceedingly rare. There were just two examples with B to play in almost 100,000 games. That astounded me because the joseki on the left side is/was quite common (though at 345 examples, not as common as I expected - it seems the joseki is a joseki-book favourite rather than an actual-play favourite).
So, straight away, it was impossible to test the 10 out of 10 claim, and on top of that it was wrong anyway because one pro did play the low attachment, but the other one played the attachment on top. Of course, the reasoning must have been the same so that's not a big deal. For the record, though, the pro who couldn't tell margarine from Yokota's butter was Segoe Kensaku, and - if you make what seems a reasonable assumption that White really shouldn't have got himself into the sort of position shown above - the initial "error" was by Go Seigen. Hmmm.
As indirect support for that last point about White having got himself into a dicey position, there were three examples of the above position with White to play and two of them involved amateurs.
There were several more surprises for me, but to mention just one more, White can respond to the low attachment by going into the Avalanche (nadare), i.e. trying to avoid being pushed towards thickness. In that case, Yokota recommended Black choosing a line of the small avalanche joseki. However, he did remark that it might not occur even to most young inseis because none of them seems to know this once popular joseki. And in the one example in actual play where White started the avalanche, the young Chinese player did not use (did not know?) the right line and seemed to me to get a bad result. I suppose that tells us that inseis don't read the same joseki books as us. In fact I don't think they read any joseki books - they are for amateurs. But that's another story.
For reference, in the topmost position, although White should apparently not approach high, it does seem from actual play that he can approach low. In the majority of cases Black still pushes towards the thickness, and there is just one example of a pincer. Also there are instances where White makes a point of not approaching in this area at all.
To go back to the 10 out of 10 claim, as I transcribe games daily I check Yokota's theory against actual pro play, and that has thrown up another surprise. His idea of pushing towards thickness is not new (there are other books saying the same thing - he just does it better) and so I had already registered it. But I had just registered it as one possible strategy out of several, e.g. pincering. In fact, so far, 10 out of 10 pros do seem to follow his theory and it's only amateurs who diverge.
by the way, I think it is a matter of taste.