I follow the recent developments in Go via go4go.net and MasterGo. And it indicates that almost no pro plays the Kobayashi Fuseki anymore. They play either the Chinese Fuseki or a kind of a modified Chinese Fuseki (where they play Chinese after first kakari white's 4-4 stone). Do you think there are reasons? Is there a discussion going on? I just wonder....

in my opinion:
no professionals plays fuseki same reason as nobody wears bell bottom pants.
many have to do with what is in.
kobayashi fuseki is not in just like bell bottom pants are not in.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

In the 3rd volume of "Baduk Made Fun and Easy" by Nam Chihyung, she devotes some time to the evolution of the Kobayashi and does in fact end with a conclusion that Black isn't good and hopes that someone will find a way to rehabilitate it. It's quite a fascinating discussion, but it's not appropriate to repeat it here.

IMHO, this doesn't mean that the opening is refuted at the amateur level, or that any pro can take white and win against any other pro. I think of it more like current study has moved onto other things.

That sounds interesting and could be a reason. It matches my idea that someone found a way so that this fuseki is not good anymore - at pro level of course. Can u post the constellation, because maybe she is referring to a special branch of Kobayashi that is indeed bad for black.

The lessons are available for free online, linked to by sensei's: BadukMadeFunAndEasy. Specifically, lessons 130-132 deal with the Kobayashi. The articles are quite informative, so I'm glad I can read them online .

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Yes, Magicwand is correct in that it is mostly about fads.

The truth is that if you are not involved in research groups, then you are mostly just following fads in your own games. Casual professionals usually just follow fads or do not keep up, so play older moves and rely on early fighting or the middlegame to win. The big opening fads are usually born in research groups and then the top players play with it for a period and show what it can do. It is like a 'theory' and 'application' process. After and during this period research groups are continuing to study these 'application' results while coming up with new big opening fads. More can be said about this relationship, but I'll leave that alone for now.

Regarding Nam Chi-hyeong's conclusion, I am weary of it. I know of some research that is as new as 2008 in the Kobayashi that gives Black a superior position. I do not know of any related counter-measures by White--but there is a lot of research out there. Her book was published in 2008, and almost all of the book-series was based on her older free articles on The Korean Times. So, I do not think that she was fully privy to all of the variations that I am referring to. For reference, here is one base position where Black begins to have a superior position:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ A or B are fine
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . O a . . . . . . . . . . . X O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . X b . . . . . , . O . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . O . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . X O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X X O . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . X . . . . . , . O . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . X X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

For what it's worth, she says that in light of the fact that black can play at 'a' still, she would prefer to be black in this situation. Reading the articles, I didn't really get the impression that she thought the Kobayashi was bad for black. She does say, however,
Make of that what you will.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

I have just done a quick check on GoGoD, and we have 21 pro games in 2010 and over 100 since 2008, so pros are still trying it. I agree that there are fads and styles in fuseki and joseki, but when people like Gu Li and Yamashita Keigo are still trying the Kobayashi fuseki, there is obviously still something of interest there.

Best wishes.

_________________
No aji, keshi, kifu or kikashi has been harmed in the compiling of this post.
http://www.gogod.co.uk

let me elaborate on my point:

1)kobayashi fuseki is mainly designed for point oriented game.
since lee changho, trend has shifted from point oriented game to thickness oriented game.

2)also many professional's try to get the edge on fuseki by studying it prior to the use.
kobayashi opening has been studied enought that professionals feel that there is no edge using it.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Thanks TMark, useful as always - how does this compare to, for example 1995-2000 or 2000-2005?

I usually play the following. Do u people think it's worse for black? (just your personal opinion since it's also often played by pro's and we all here don't have the knowledge to actually judge fusekis) One think I like about this opening is the fact you can play it often as black and white, so that you get a deeper feel for the opening.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ A or B are fine
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . O O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . X . . X . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Searching in the database only for played out kobayashi and mini-chinese may miss the main point. To an initial star point, professionals overwhelmingly answer on the adjacent starpoint nowadays. (I use MasterGo database.) That is on initial star point nearly 80% 2 in 3 play on adjacent starpoint since 2005, while only 1 in 8 before 1990. This is likely related to Kobayashi (less) and Mini-Chinese (more) as it offers an easy way to deny Kobayashi and Mini-Chinese with the White move in the fourth corner by the appropriate 3-4 point (which is most common for denying Mini-Chinese and gaining popularity against the Kobayashi, of course a pincer against a "Kobayashi approach" is common as well).

Nobody who doesn't like these fuseki strategies (and the hickhack of complicated variations) has to play them. Good simplifying strategy.

Interesting stats these. I've just gone through all 50 games posted so far in 2011 on the JustPlayGo site, and found the following:

13 games started on the 3-4 point
37 games started on the 4-4 point

Of those 37:
29 had White respond on the adjacent 4-4 point
7 had White respond on the opposite 4-4 point
1 had White respond on the adjacent 3-4 point (pointing towards the empty corner)

So not quite 1/8 out of this collection, but still clearly a significant minority, and almost no games at all that didn't have a 4-4 followup of some kind.

Ehem, only 1 in 8 played adjacent 4-4 before 1990, a bit less than 80% about 2 in 3 since 2005. 2011 data fit in the picture. Btw. the adjacent komoku (of course point towards the empty corner) was once the main line. Imho the thought behind it is clear, if the opponent plays a komoku in the third move, White has a choice how to face it in the fourth corner - a choice White foregoes by playing in the opposite corner on move 2. The price is offering a diagonal fuseki - most amateurs are scared of granting this choice to Black for some reason, professionals are not, and Black actually does not like it.

I wonder whether the belated turn of amateurs towards fashionable whole board openings may be even worse than joseki craze of earlier times - joseki were at least modular giving you something to think about choices and the whole board, nowadays people from mid-dan to hi/lo kyu grades (those near to 10k) are parroting professional whole board openings. Bad development if you ask me.

Ah, I apologise, I'd read your previous post as the other way around in both senses (1/8 did not play adjacent 4-4 post 2005 etc) - no idea how my brain did that.



I agree wholeheartedly with this. I still don't even really know what the mini-chinese looks like, and I have no idea what I'm technically supposed to do with Kobayashi either. It sort of reminds me somehow of the whole "Hey, it wasn't my fault I lost the corner, he didn't play the joseki right" type arguments

Assuming I've understood you correctly, the GoGoD database gives very different figures.

With initial 4-4 for 2006-2011 we have 6791 games, and in 4289 White answered on the adjacent corner 4-4, that is only 63.1% (if you include 2005, the figure is 63.4%). If you restrict the search to 2010 and 2011 we have 64.6% - not sure whether that's enough to claim a significant trend.

For games before 1990, our figure is 11%, which is at least in the same ball park (1 in 8 = 13%), but I'm puzzled why there is such a big discrepancy for recent games. For all games 2006-11 we have 13612, out of a total database of over 66,000 games.

White can prevent such a result with about every move...

1) Not play on the star point in the fourth corner (if you started in the adjacent corner that is).
2) Pincer the kobayashi approach (that is the way I play, easy to handle, sure not to have a kobayashi fuseki).
3) Don't play the far low approach, but the instant invasion (in "mini"-kobayashi) or the far high approach

One really should start looking into the variations at the early branches before studying the very complicated variations after settling for one of those branches, imo.

@JF Actual numbers for mastergo (not yet updated to include most of 2010 games) is 3909 of 5886 = 66.4% (still higher than GoGod numbers though, my mind processed 4000/5000 obviously ) for >= 2005 and 1021 of 8333 = 12.3% for <=1990. I would not claim a trend in the last years (not looked into the data) but from 1/8 to 2/3 there is a clear jump in preference happening between 1990 and 2000. Which I would relate to the whole board opening trends.

A year by year list would be nice.

Attached are the results from the Summer 2010 edition of GoGoD. In GoGoD the databases for older games represent longer time periods but from 1980 there is a database for each year. For interpreting the chart, take 1970-1975 as an example. There were 2093 total games in the database, of which 12% started with two consecutive plays on star points. Three percent of these (8 games) were played on adjacent corners while 97 percent (244 games) were played on opposite corners. This 97% - 3% split happened to be the greatest difference in any single database.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Wow, that's quite an interesting change as time goes on. Did something happen in 1999 that could explain the huge shift we see there? In '98, nearly half of all games with hoshi on move one and two were played with those moves in opposite corners, but after that we only get above 35% in that category once.

The database total column is also quite interesting, especially with the huge drop in popularity of double-hoshi in 2004-2008 and subsequent increase. I could be completely wrong, but I wonder if 2004-2008 were more popular for playing something like the Mini-Chinese, and 2009-on saw a decrease in popularity of that opening.

Anyway, very interesting information. Thanks ez4u.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

If we look deeper into the information in the database, we see that the situation is fairly complex. What follows is a bit of a story, an imaginative interpretation of what may or may not be real patterns in too few games. It is certainly an over simplification because the pro world is constantly competitive with many different ideas being tried all the time. To make sense of all the games presented in the databases is impossible. It is also rather hard to research thoroughly in a reasonable time with the tools available. But enjoy it anyway!

Nevertheless and in broad terms... before we get to '98 we should look back to 1991. Notice the abortive shift from opposite to adjacent that occurred in that year. It looks almost as if White started to change to the adjacent play and then backed off. This is exactly what did happen, but Black was the driver of that change. It was the result of a strategic battle around plays 3 and 4! Around this time Black 3 was most often played at Q3 in the lower right, in preparation for a standard Chinese fuseki, an 'old Kobayashi' enclosure at R5, or a new Kobayashi approach play in the lower left. Against this White played mainly the other star point on the left, so it made little difference whether White played first in the upper or bottom left. However, around 1989-1990 White began playing at C4 instead of D4 on play 4, threatening to play E3 next if Black continued with a Chinese or old Kobayashi. The result was that Black gave up on B4 at Q3! From 1992 through 1995 the most common B4 steadily reverted to the star point in the lower right. This was not a reversion to the earlier interest in playing San-Ren-Sei (except for people like Takemiya). The middle 90’s were an era of Ni-Ren-Sei, where Black typically made an approach move against one of the White star points on the left rather than playing again on the right. Meanwhile as Black shifted away from a heavy emphasis on Q3, interestingly enough White tended to revert to choosing the opposite star point rather than the adjacent one - seemingly without Black playing tit-for-tat and reverting in turn to Q3.

This changed again around 1998. Why? All along, one choice for black on B3 was the play at R4. Through 1996 the reason for playing there was mainly to enclose the lower right with P3 after a White play on the other left side star point. Suddenly in 1997 the most frequently chosen strategy for Black on B5 shifted to an approach in the lower left in order to initiate the mini-Chinese. The following year, the most common choice for B3 was R4 instead of Q4. White reacted immediately by shifting W2 solidly to the adjacent star point in order to preserve flexibility in the choice of W4. We cannot say, "the rest is history", rather it is a story that is still being written.

The years immediately after 1999 saw resurgence in B3 at Q3, as interest in the new Kobayashi created a new, major branch at B5. Although the mini-Chinese was probably the most heavily explored strategy for Black, the combination of the Chinese and the Kobayashi made B3 at Q3 the most frequent beginning to the game. The situation became chaotic in 2002 with the shift to 6.5 point komi. In that year no major fuseki for Black had a winning percentage in the GoGoD database. Nevertheless, Q3 continued as the most frequent choice for B3. This changed finally around 2007 as interest in the Kobayashi has in fact declined. The database reflects the rise and now the fall of the Kobayashi at the professional level - in line with the subject of this thread. The Chinese and variants are back as the principal idea underlying Black’s Q3. Who knows where we will be in ten more years.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21