Boidhre wrote:At the moment my only reason for playing it is because I like the shape at the end and I think the exchange of a framework on the side for white versus a corner and a smaller framework on the side for black is pretty reasonable at my level...
Yeah, as you'll notice I didn't have anything to say either about
either; I agree that as ddk fuseki goes, it's a pretty good result. (That isn't the same as saying it's a good result!
)But one reason why this is considered bad for black is that black
doesn't have the corner yet; white can still invade and reduce the corner to almost nothing. In general, the Bq4/p3,Wo3/4 shape is surprisingly weak for black, wherever it occurs on the board, and more often than not W has some surprising mischief up his sleeve.
One useful way to think about p3 ("the kick") --- As you know, p3 isn't locally sente; the kick forces W to play o4, but that in turn forces B to play q6, which gives W the opportunity to extend to k4. Now, what if B just played q6 directly, without kicking first?
More often than not, white will respond by playing k4! At this point, does B want to take the opportunity to play the kick? Absolutely not - B's stone at p3 doesn't offer much protection to the corner, but W's stone at o4 protects against a devastating black invasion that can separate o3 and k4.
...and if my opponent neglects the extension to form a base (it happens around 17k) I have a very nice target.
Don't play go like that! There are some games that strongly resemble rock-paper-scissors. Some of them I even love. (Diplomacy, for example.) Go isn't one of them. The sooner you ask "where would I play if W were much smarter than I am?" instead of "where would I play if W were much dumber than I am?", the more you'll enter into the spirit of the game.
I don't think small edges for white or black in the opening really mean that much for weak ddks similar to how in chess small advantages in the opening can be pretty much ignored for the most part by beginners since it'll be a major tactical blunder(s) that'll decide the game not minor advantages built up in the opening.
This is true if you mean "I want to focus more on learning to avoid tactical blunders than on playing a perfect opening." This is false if you mean, "I'm going to keep playing openings that I know are bad because it doesn't affect the rest of the game." It really does matter, even if you don't have a clear sense of how much it matters, and it especially matters to the people reviewing your games, because they're trying to look at who is winning and who is losing, and how aggressively each side has to play to stay in the game. When we look at the midgame tactical blunder, the first thing we ask is "was there a way to avoid the blunder," the second thing we ask is "was there a way to avoid the dubious invasion that lead to the blunder," and the third thing we ask is, "was there a way to avoid the losing situation on the board that made the dubious invasion necessary."
, 
-- but in reality both moves are no problem for these levels.