Fuseki Schmuseki #1

[lorill]

An idea for those with huge databases : the same exercise, but only with pro games, from several periods. Let's see if we can guess how old some fuseki are

[daniel_the_smith]

Wow, I seem to have gotten better about this sort of thing. Interesting!

[Mark356]

Interesting exercise! I thought that with just 10 moves, it would be really hard, because the same funky-looking move could equally be the move of a clueless beginner and a top pro. I thought that the next 20 moves explained and clarified a lot, but interestingly, my guesses after the first 10 were more accurate than the guesses after seeing the first 30 moves!

I only could guess in very broad ranges, because rank is a measure of score regardless of technique, so 2 people with the same rank can have very different skill sets. Plus, I haven't seen enough games so that I could definitively say what the difference between, say, a 5k game and a 10k game is.

I was sure that game 5 was between top pros, though. Amateurs don't randomly use Go Seigen moves like that. And even at 10 moves, it looked like they both knew how to use it. Black uses something like a high mini-Chinese, and it looked like confident play. But after seeing 30 moves, I was going to guess that the two-point high attachment was just an amateur fluke, since it looked like there were reading problems in the lower right: an atari that can't capture, a hazama tobi that's cut immediately-- so I was going to guess a mid-kyu.

I was going to guess game 8 was a Yoda Norimoto game-- I know I saw him open a game in a similar way before. Black follows up a peculiar opening with beautiful use of joseki on the left side, ending in sente that lets him play on the right side too. So even if not Yoda Norimoto per se, I was sure that it would be a pro game.

I was also going to guess game 3 was a pro game, for the same reason as game 5: White uses a Go Seigen signature move, and uses it well. I thought Black's shape was a bit odd after 30 moves, but it still looked like he knew what he was doing.

Game 1 is the most surprising. After 10 moves, it could equally be a pro game or rank amateur game. But after the invasion joseki, I thought that there was no way it could be higher than mid-kyu. Why didn't White descend and cut off Black? If Black then tries to cut, White can capture that stone in a ladder, right?

Game 6 looked very weak, even after 10 moves. Black 9 just doesn't look like a good response to White 8, because White can cut it so easily. So he'll have to defend, and end up with a cramped shape. Later, Black makes a similarly loose move on the top, and White just captures it. I was going to guess that this was between low kyu players, or perhaps a low kyu with a mid-kyu.