Life In 19x19

I am studying Yamashita Keigo's games chronologically starting from 2000 ; see my study journal. I am "collecting" his games to a hundred moves in seperate SGFs for his play as black / white.

There, I ventured the idea that a systematic study of a single joseki or fuseki might be a good alternative study technique.

I want to stick to my chosen "single pro study" properly, so I was hoping someone else might want to do some version of systematic joseki or fuseki study (and journal/record it).


If you are interested and looking for some guidance, I actually did this very casually a few years ago with avalanche joseki, which I found to be an excellent choice especially the simpler/few-move variations ; given they're typically directly at black's option if white plays a 3-4, territorial attachment.

Games could be studied chronologically in sets of five, like I'm doing for Yamashita. The goal is to make concrete, correct judgements for novel boards (like those in your own games...) even when the situation doesn't correspond exactly to a studied game (when it does, so much the better).

Success to be measured in playing rank gains.

Kato Masao played the same opening over and over until he felt he understood it and then switched. If I recall correctly he played a Shusaku-style opening then a san-ren-sei, then Chinese style. If you have his games you could play through ones with the same fuseki and do as you want to with Yamashita.

I have casually done this with the Low Chinese fuseki for a long time. I sometimes go into go4go.net's games and look for the Low Chinese pattern, then study those games in particular. I don't pick a single player, although Park Jungwhan is one I often look for as he is a high level player who has used the Chinese frequently - even as white a few times, which I enjoy finding.

What exactly are you looking for in these studies?

I was interested in gleaning insights into both go strategy and go strategy learning. Relatively systematic approaches might be more amenable to analysis later.

I'm interested in the idea that eg. a solid study of a position arising from Chinese fuseki could help someone make a genuinely good decision on a board that did not feature Chinese fuseki.