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What do you think of the "polite way" to play and is this really the opinion of the pros even after the unsymmetrical 3-4 stone?
What Haylee says is pure twaddle. There are thousands of pro games with a White play in the lower right, starting in Edo times and still very common today. It's necessary to be able to play there otherwise you would be illegally denying White certain arrangements given that Black has broken the symmetry with move 1.
I suspect this view (if it really is widespread) may have derived from two of Shusai's very famous games: his 1926 game with Karigane and his 1938 Retirement Game with Kitani. There Shusai played White 2 at R4 and virtually every one of the many commentaries picked up on that, even using the phrase "Shusai's komoku." It was certainly the move he favoured in his most important games but he did not invent it. It had already been very common throughout Edo times. One other reason interest latched on to it, of course, is that this move was seen as part of a new wave of thinking that led to New Fuseki (its basis was the urge to bypass Shusaku's fuseki).
There was a similar myth about san-san not being allowed by the Honinbo school. Yet both Shuwa and Shusaku played it.
And if it comes to that, while it may be considered polite (nowadays "more photogenic" might be better) to play first in the upper right, it is not at all impolite to play elsewhere - although Kuroda Shunsetsu did famously apologise to Honinbo Shuho in Meiji times, in desperation after losing heavily in match, before playing first move at tengen in their final game. Indeed, this incident may have fuelled the myth about first move in the upper right.
Politenesses about first move did exist, however. There are the early-Edo cases where White (the weaker player) was allowed to play first in games at court with Yasui Sanchi, out of a sense of protocol.
Slightly different, but there is also the case of Kitani who liked to choose his orientation on the board according to how the grain ran. He felt that opponents were psychologically resistant to playing on areas of ugly grain, so he would make his moyo around them.