Life In 19x19

In general I think far too much emphasis is placed on josekis by weaker players, and westerners have two added encumbrances in that they are often used to the concept of memorising chess openings and they more often than not misuse the term joseki (it means simply plays that have become accepted as standard - although that implies both sides may be happy to accept the result it does not necessarily imply the result is equally beneficial to both). Despite that, I was provoked by recent joseki threads to add a little hard data to the mix. Make of it what you will.

I took the Suzuki/Kitani joseki dictionary which offers exactly 6,000 diagrams. I took 1,000 consecutive diagrams as a sample and counted the number of diagrams on the basis of the standard evaluations given. Some diagrams are just reference diagrams or starter positions so they do not show up in the total. Also some diagrams related to tenuki variations and I kept those separate. Although I took the standard evaluations as a basis, I collapsed all cases of advantage for Black into "B+", even though this ranges from "more promising for Black" to "White is crushed". But much more often than not the advantage marker was something middling like "better for Black". Similarly for White, of course. As mentioned above, the categories 'joseki' and 'even' are exclusive. Nevertheless, 'even' is better regarded as meaning 'well matched' or 'well balanced' given that Black has played first rather than 'equal'. 'Plausible' means what a pro might do in that situation, not that this pattern has necessarily occurred in practice. At your own discretion, you may wish to regard it as equivalent to 'even'. 'Other' means descriptive labels such as 'counterattack', 'trade', 'centre fight', etc.

All the positions show Back playing first and relate only to one-corner openings (and the sample was restricted to low approach against komoku). The 6,000-diagram book is now a little out of date, but that does not matter in this context.

832 LINES WITH ALTERNATING PLAYS
Joseki: 79
Even: 71
B+: 380
W+: 175
Plausible: 39
Unclear: 1
Ko: 10
Ladder: 8
Special case: 6
Other: 63

In addition, these results subsume 8 examples of trick moves (hamete) and 6 examples of semeais. 4 of the josekis are marked as 'old joseki'.

These figures show an overwhelming likelihood of lines ending in an implicitly unacceptable advantage for one side or the other, and of course Black (always moving first) owns the casino here. Kos, semeais and ladders are rather infrequent outcomes. Extrapolating to the full 6,000 diagrams, it seems there are only around 500 lines that are regarded as josekis in the proper sense. Apart from being learnable (if you really must go down that route), these are few enough plausibly to provide a means of benchmarking various evaluation systems.

109 LINES WITH ONE WHITE TENUKI
Joseki: 10
Even: 4
B+: 69
W+ 14
Plausible: 6
Ladder: 2
Special case: 1
Other: 3

Methinks much could be learnt from those cases where White gets an advantage despite having skipped a move!

My reaction to seeing this is that joseki are extremely important since you don't want to get into one of the many bad results. And you want to force your opponent into a bad one for him if you can.

yoyoma wrote:My reaction to seeing this is that joseki are extremely important since you don't want to get into one of the many bad results. And you want to force your opponent into a bad one for him if you can.

I would tend to agree with the over emphasis on Joseki, the way I see it, the Joseki appeals to Westerners ability to spell, there are even "dictionaries". This way of thinking doesn't come easily to people whose native language are picture languages.

However, as a Westerner who was never very impressed by 10 dollar words perfectly spelled, what is more important is how the words are strung together and the content of the words. The content aspect it seems is lost on many Westerners, who in insist spelling is the most virtuous concept.

SmoothOper wrote: I would tend to agree with the over emphasis on Joseki, the way I see it, the Joseki appeals to Westerners ability to spell, there are even "dictionaries". This way of thinking doesn't come easily to people whose native language are picture languages.

Judging by the number of joseki dictionaries and problem books in Japanese, this is not a West/East issue. It comes just as easily to Japanese as Westerners.

oren wrote:

SmoothOper wrote: I would tend to agree with the over emphasis on Joseki, the way I see it, the Joseki appeals to Westerners ability to spell, there are even "dictionaries". This way of thinking doesn't come easily to people whose native language are picture languages.

Judging by the number of joseki dictionaries and problem books in Japanese, this is not a West/East issue. It comes just as easily to Japanese as Westerners.

Sure, but how many English tsumego books vs English Joseki dictionaries and Joseki manuals(as in Direction of Play)?

Tsumego books don't need to be in English.

SmoothOper wrote: Sure, but how many English tsumego books vs English Joseki dictionaries and Joseki manuals(as in Direction of Play)?

I'm not sure what you mean but the general relationship of high numbers of joseki books is relatively the same.

oren wrote:

SmoothOper wrote: Sure, but how many English tsumego books vs English Joseki dictionaries and Joseki manuals(as in Direction of Play)?

I'm not sure what you mean but the general relationship of high numbers of joseki books is relatively the same.

Just that if you count the number of tsumego books in english, then you would see that emphasis on Joseki, is true. People make the argument that you don't need the translation for tsumego books, however I think that line of reasoning adds credibility to the argument that Joseki are over emphasized, after all most Joseki dictionaries don't really need to be translated either. Personally I feel like there might be some information in some of the tsumego texts, I mean part of the way through some chapters I can figure out that there is some sort of pattern that I am learning, but I suspect that it might be easier to learn these if I understood the text. Not to mention other types of strategic books, haengma or tesuji for example.

In other-words, you can't claim to not emphasize some topic and simultaneously neglect, ignore, or belittle all other topics.

SmoothOper wrote: Just that if you count the number of tsumego books in english, then you would see that emphasis on Joseki, is true.

And the same is true for the Asian language the books are translated from, so it is no better or worse than the East.

Except there are lots of tsumego books in Asian languages.

SmoothOper wrote:Except there are lots of tsumego books in Asian languages.

And a lot of them are joseki.

oren wrote:

SmoothOper wrote:Except there are lots of tsumego books in Asian languages.

And a lot of them are joseki.

Even more Fuseki though :p