Is learning joseki boring?
Playing everyday on the Internet I find out immediately if my opponent has studied joseki. At first I knew from their strange responses to the simple ones I learnt here. Then I began to see that this was also reflected in their playing which somehow lacked shape and efficiency a lot of the time. I began asking people of my low level, indirectly and without any implicit criticism, if they studied joseki and found the answer was, more often than not, `No. They are not interesting. I prefer to play.` So I have to ask, as something worth exploring, if studying joseki is boring?
According to the branch of psychology known as `flow theory` things become boring when they are too easy. Okay, lets scrub this approach. I don`t find joseki easy to learn so it must be something else. I look at my bookshelf (actually floor and cat litter tray) and am awed by the number of joseki dictionaries I have. The most famous one by Ishida is a magnificent set of three volumes. I gingerly open the first one and it say `not only a reference work, but a systematic course of study.` Great! `Systematic course of study,` is something I can relate to. I begin with good intentions on page one. It`s boring. Very boring. More boring than watching golf even. Holy cow!

Have I answered my research problem? Joseki are boring things like knitting patterns that only Dumbledore is interested in. This can`t be true. Can it? In gote no-one can hear you screeeeeem.
But, I am a thinker (sometimes.) The problem here is clearly overload. What is relevant or not relevant is not clear and I don`t want to die before I finish one of these books. How would I explain that to St. Peter? Clearly having the most important ones identified by Guo in her Step by Step course is going to be a big help. Not only do we have a target now, but we can go to the books, find the page and write all over it in red pen.`Guo says play here, not here.` etc. Pity red pens cannot do a chinese accent...... Writing in a book, marking it with a post-it sticker and so on is fun and suddenly studying joseki begins to look a little bit more like a night on the town with Angela Jolie (or not).
However, joking aside tis is still not quite enough to brush away the boring blues. The reasoning behind this is that someone else is telling us what we have to learn. To some extent this is inevitable in any learning of a complex skill. Nonetheless, it is still an external voice telling us `do xyz because I say so.` implicit in this message is that if one fails to achieve what has been requested one is an inferior product, perhaps off a North Korean rocket assembly line. You see, it`s still not quite personal enough. It`s not quite what I want to do for my reasons at a specific time to solve a specific problem. So, to get around this problem we can run a parallel study course that is directly related to our needs and wishes. That is to say, while working on our set joseki we should be reviewing our games. Do you remember that slight feeling of panic and wondering if you did the right thing against that kakari? Well, that is where our key study lies. Go to the joseki dictionary, study that move in depth and that is something really powerful to get a hold of. Its something you remember wanting and needing at a given moment and so the desire will be high. You will become a joseki nerd in no time. There is one more problem I have noticed in the way we learn and I think this is connected to things like dailyjoseki.com. These electronic boards seem really cool and trendy (which they are) but have you ever noticed that they can diminish our thinking processes. The temptation to just press a button without figuring it out is really high. It`s like trying to assemble a tent while not bothering to read the instructions.....A truly bad habit. So when we study from books there is a strong and similar tendency to read and place stones at the same time. In other words a simultaneous process is occurring. This obviates the need for using imagery and holding patterns in short term memory which is what learning is about.
In fact a three step process is needed. First drink some coffee. Second open your book to the correct page. Third , kick your cat off the goban. Fourth read the joseki. Read it. Dont move your hands to the goban or the remains of your cat. Or the remains of your coffee that the cat kicked over. Think about it! Imagine a goban in your head and replay the joseki with the correct spacing a few times. If you can see this clearly you are ready to place stones on the goban. Try it! They just flow down without thought because the computer that controls the hand has been pre-programed correctly. It is a totally different thing. You will also be amazed to find that learning joseki like this is not boring. Why not? Because the mind is engaged in a challenge and that is what it was born to do. In the meantime the cat is peeing in the corner of the kitchen.
But then that is what -it- was born to do. Cheers, Buri

Every once and a while, some young kid takes a liking to me and decides to be my mentor for a while. My latest, a Korean guy whom I met in the ASR League, has told me to learn one joseki a day which he had picked out for me. This went well for two days. Actually, I haven't seen him since, but I've been using these two josekis every chance I get, and although my opponents have deviated every time fairly early on in the joseki, I've done my best to compare the move to the one I was expecting, and have usually come out with a good result. In any case, learning (memorizing) one joseki is neither boring nor difficult, and as long as I basically stick to one main variation, I can remember it. I think the difficulties I've had in the past learning josekis can all be reduced to the fact that I tried to remember more than I could remember, and thus promptly forgot everything.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I don't know what it means to study joseki. Sometimes I look up the joseki online to check whether the thingy I played in my game was a joseki. If it wasn't I investigate a bit and then move on. I mostly enjoy replaying pro games and studying problems. I've never found joseki study worthwhile so I don't know if it's boring or not

Greetings,
the original post was, of course, somewhat tongue in cheek....but my experience has been through exposure to a number of noted Chinese teachers , that learning joseki is an essential part of training. For someone as low level as myself learning the basic ones as a kind of rote exercise is somewhat inevitable. However, there is a very salutary chapter on learning joseki in Kageyama`s book `Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go,` in which he points out the limitations of this approach. Actually @derides` would be a better word.Perhaps his most important point is:
`Every stone played by both sides in a josekiis the best move, so it is importnat to know the reasonfor it- its content, its meaning. If you can convince yourself as to why the stone is played where it is and why it is a good move, then you have done some studying.`
Cheers,
Buri

Joseki are not boring.

Rote learning is boring.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

"Rote learning might be very old school, but it still works after all this time." as my Arabic teacher used to say. In my opinion there is nothing wrong in rote learning - you will have plenty of opportunities to think about them once you learned them (and if you try to apply them), but you won't think at all, if you will never see them, because you didn't bother to learn them. And of course Kageyma does not discourage studying joseki, what he discourages is learning a few dozen joseki and stopping there, the last sentence even asks to take the joseki book, open it and study it again...

What I would advise is to learn joseki in pairs right away. So after the approach, learn one joseki with a pincer and another one where you don't pincer, after a pincer learn a joseki to jump out and another one to jump in the corner, learn one sequence that ends in gote, another that ends in sente etc. etc. And look at the easy stuff first (it is amazing how many choices amateurs are missing just because they stick to a few learned standard joseki). This as opposed to the "I learned this fashionable and complicated joseki and hope to punish my opponent when he deviates."-approach, which is pretty common, but likely the type of joseki study that will harm in the long run.

But isn't it better to use Joseki as more of a general guide to what kind of formations you can expect to get out of a position?

The reason I'd recommend some small amount of joseki study is so that people don't keep playing the simple ones over and over again.

But using it as a prescription for play is dangerous.


I'd like to enter into evidence:

Exhibit A) The ease/difficulty with which one can remember games.

This is heavily dependent on whether or not the moves make sense. I could play an incredibly complicated game, but if each move follows from the previous one, I'd remember it easily.

The same is true for Joseki, they are easy to remember when they make sense.

If you start someone on a joseki book but they're not yet using the concepts that construct those joseki, then their only tool to keep all the joseki in mind is rote memorization.

Rote memorization has its uses, but in this case, it will serve as an easy route which avoids internalization of the concepts. Once they have the concepts, then they can use those to remember the josekis.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Applying the same josekis instead of also using creativity can become boring.

Rote learning josekis (e.g., from pure variations dictionaries), then forgetting some, then rote learning them again etc. becomes boring sooner or later.

Learning josekis by a great variety of methods and aspects (e.g., from books teaching such) has the least danger of becoming boring.

My vision on the joseki matter is that if someone is just playing for fun and doesn't really care much about improving beyond a certain level (low dan), then learning josekis can be useless and even boring for him. But for someone who wants to excel and hopefully reach the higher ranks someday learning joseki is a necessity (usually learning joseki for those people is not boring since they are motivated to learn). On a personal note, I study joseki mainly by reviewing my games right after playing them and comparing what i played with the different variations that are available. The lone problem i have with that is not the boredom that might arise for some due to repetition, but the difficulty in actually remembering what variations i did study.

Here is an example of what you can gain from studying joseki:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc 3-4 pincer joseki
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . a 1 . . . . .
$$ | . . . , . . . . .
$$ | . b . 2 . . . . .
$$ | . . . . 4 . . . .
$$ | . . 3 . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Black's one space low pincer aims to connect his stones at c15. White's usual responses, such as a, b or this kosumi (and yes I am aware it is an old joseki) prevent this connection. This shape of a 3-space 3rd line to 4th line extension is very common, and this shape knowledge learnt from joseki is very useful. Here's a random example from a pro game:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc 1 invades, 2 runs and keeps it cut (one space jump to a would not cut)
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . X . 1 . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . a . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]

A friend of mine who is about 7k does not study joseki, read books etc. He does not know this kosumi to prevent the connection as a piece of shape knowledge. He might find it in a game, but it won't come to him automatically as it does to me who has studied that 3-4 pincer joseki.

Hi Uberdude,
interesting coincidence. Right now I am studying a Juan Guo lesson which teaches that very kosumi as a basic shape. While recognizing there are other alternatives she believes this is a very strong way of keeping the stones separated. The lesson also includes the same attack you demonstrate here. I also feel that this kosumi is slightly counter intuitive to a beginner such as myself but when you see it explained then the value of this kind of study becomes much clearer.
Cheers,
Buri

I don't think studying joseki is needed. Anything you may possibly learn from studying joseki can also be learned from studying haengma, shapes, etc. without the risk of finding yourself "studying" the moves of joseki sequences without understanding each move's purpose and when it's appropriate given the global situation.

Studying joseki is necessary because simple variations are not always the best and quite a few regularly occurring josekis involve surprising difficulties that are hard to discover ad hoc during one's games, regardless whether - as a high dan - one knows all the general, joseki-independent theory applicable also to josekis. Kyus have a greater need to study josekis because they would not discover even basic or moderate difficulties.

The only way I've "studied" joseki so far is to look up a specific corner sequence after I was unhappy with a result I got in a game. Then I look for something specific, as in "why didn't this move work" or "what should I expect to get out of this", and the knowledge is something that I know I can use at once since it is a need that came from an actual game.

Other than that I've found my time is better spent practising reading. That way I get a universal skill that can give me decent result during all parts of the game, not just during the specific corner sequences.

Have you considered studying go theory while studying joseki? This another way of more efficient learning.

One reason joseki are boring is a selection effect; western go is largely composed of people who could have played chess but, at some point, decided they didn't like chess enough to take it seriously. And for a lot of people, that reason was that they found memorizing openings ridiculous.

That makes sense. It seems that such guys often get stuck around 6k

Well, that's why I quit chess... I hated having to study chess opening theory.

_________________
Tactics yes, Tact no...

Greetings,
i have always felt that beer bottle opening theory has much to teach us.
Cheers,
buri

This kosumi is certainly a standard shape move. Notice that it is the famous Shusaku kosumi (in the corner in response to an approach to a 3-4 stone). But it has more purposes than keeping the two white stones separated and there are times, when the whole-board position is different, when it would not be the right move.