Life In 19x19

Hey guys - if you're familiar with my play, you'll know my favorite opening strategy of the moment is "give my opponent a definitive 50 point lead". As I have A Dictionary of Modern Fusek - The Korean Style, I have started methodically going through it with an eye to knowing at least one relatively straight forward path to midgame for white considering black's opening.

To try and get things to stick in my memory, after reading through sections, I'm writing casual and personal summaries afterwards. I thought I'd share them with you- feel free to lend an opinion, ask a question about or even adopt these tactics (if so let me know how it goes). I can continue to post these as I go if any of you are interested.

Warning; my style when talking to myself is a bit strange, and I haven't edited this at all as my goal was not to plagiarize the dictionary or write my own version of Charles Matthews' excellent On Your Side.


Sanrensei
So black has three stars and it’s white’s approach!
Approaching from the inside meets a kick and white is cramped – black’s result is obviously superior!

So- A low knights move approach from the outside (lets say conventionally to the top right)! Black can pincer, and white is happy to take the corner (3-3wise). NB white should threaten (and execute if possible) breaks in black’s wall to take a lot of secure, early territory.

But what if black thinks he’s Takemiya Masaki (does the diagonal move). Taking the corner is still fine for white.
NB in the sanrensei situation, both sides want the tenuki to the bottom star – a very big point. If black gets it, white probably wants to make a 2 space fouth line extension towards it from his bot left hoshi to mitigate its influence. Black wants to wedge white’s left as the next big point.

What about black’s one point jump along the side response! Something tricky like flicking back to the top star is certainly possible, but honestly, the good ol’ slide – 2 space extension is simple and fine. See above for the bottom star situation. If black goes straight for the bottom hoshi after the slide, white can one point jump up, and now has miai of the top side extension and taking the corner. The one point jump up is also an ok alternative to the 2 space extension in general.

What if black ignores white and just nails the bottom star! One point jump – black kinda must jump as well – jump again – jump again –white makes a high chinese enclosure on top – black hits a good point with an off-side knights move cap on white’s jumps (also makes the good horse head triangle shape).

There are other moves, but these seem like they’ll cover most sanrensei games, and they’re fine!

Your Self,
Loons


For fun challenge: Can you extrapolate diagrams from my descriptions?

Loons wrote:Hey guys - if you're familiar with my play ...

Nope, not yet familiar with your play. One reason is that you seem to have discontinued to play your fine handicap match against Magicwand, which is was looking forward to watching - especially as I am around your strength.

Any chance that you will revive that?

On a completely side note - if this sort of study is useful to you and you benefit from it, then I can't argue with it, but you shouldn't need it to avoid being down by dozens of points after the fuseki, at least at the 4k level. If you're coming out of the opening in that bad shape, you probably need more work on your general opening principles than on studying lots of fuseki variations.

After playing for roughly two years I can state:
Learning standard fusekipatterns is okay, but the real important thing is to grasp the ideas behind the different fusekis and be able to extrapolate it to your own fuseki.

I own a copy of Modern Fuseki, too. I think the basic problem with the book is, that you have to be able to back the fuseki up. If you simply play the variations mentioned in the book and arent able to fight well with f.e. the strength you get by playing a certain variation, you can screw the complete fuseki idea.

I think really important is to take your time in the opening (although personally I tend to handle this wrong myself and blitzing the first 50 moves). When the game enters middle game there are only a few correct paths available, in yose the may only be one correct order of moves, but in fuseki the complete board is empty. You can frame the board like you like to play. If you watch livegames played by pros you'll notice that most of them spend an incredible amount of their thinking time with the first moves.

Thank you, Loons, for telling us your strategy. Now, don't be surprised if you drop to 51K because even the dogs know it now