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Quiz time. Who recently declared something very similar to:

“Fuseki theory is developing very quickly and it’s getting harder and harder to follow it.”

a. Go Seigen

b. TheCaptain

c. Cho Chikun

d. Yoda Norimoto

c. Tartrate

d. Lee Sedol

e. Rui Naiwei

?

(Update)

Answer: d. Lee Sedol declared that in a recent interview.

I think this is amazing: Lee Sedol is the top player in recent international tournaments - so if fuseki is hard for him, what should the rest of us do…

I used to think at some point that fuseki doesn’t really matter for us amateurs, since most games are lost in the middle game fights. That is very wrong: fuseki is the foundation of the whole game, so it should be treated very seriously. If one’s foundation is not solid, the rest of the game will suffer too.

I found by chance this photo of an Asian ad (the ad is for a Chinese resort, but I am not sure if it is displayed in Japan or in China).

What is really strange is that even in Asia they would make up (almost) random positions when Go / Baduk /Weiqi boards are displayed:

Unless the position is that high and unusual on purpose and the ad has some very deep message, but I somehow doubt that

(Here is the source of the photo).

A new Sydney Go Journal issue (number 14) just came out - this time with a supplement, and several professional games to illustrate the main theme, which this time is how to build up the foundation of your game: fuseki.

Many thanks to David Mitchell, who is writing this high quality Go journal!

Yamashita Keigo Kisei defended his title with 4 straight wins against Kobayashi Satoru.

It was a young vs. senior match, and the young one won - which seems to be the rule in professional Go today, rather than the exception. See my coverage of this year’s Kisei title.

New article

I wrote a brief article on my rule of thumb when it comes to approach a “Kobayashi fuseki” formation.

“Search this site”

I added a “Search this page” control in the upper-right of each page on the 361points.com site, to make easier to find things around. This is powered by Google.

Also, if you haven’t noticed that already, there is a “customized Go search” page, which only searches internet pages related to Go. Let me know what your favorite Go pages are and I’ll add them to the search list.

Game 4 of Kisei started on February 22nd (and will be continued on February 23rd)

I was surprised to see the fuseki: it’s the “old” Kobayashi-fuseki (no relation to Kobayashi Satoru though - it is named after Kobayashi Koichi, who dominated Japanese Go in the 80’s). I checked in my games database, and indeed, the last time it was played in a professional tournament (at least based on the games I have) was in 2005: I don’t know of any Kobayashi-fuseki professional game from 2006!.

See the diagram for what this fuseki is about: the interesting part is the lower side for Black.

The most popular choices for White next are, in order: A (242 games in my collection), B (41 matches) and C (18 matches). White (Yamashita) chose C in the 4th Kisei game. When this fuseki was still new, white used to play closer approaches in the lower-right: keima-kakari and ikken-kakari appeared briefly in the 80’s and early 90’s. Note how nowadays white keeps distance - black is very strong on the lower side, after all.

Close to the end of day one, the position is very complicated: white just did a cross-cut in the center, putting pressure on the black group in the middle. Black took profit in the lower-right quarter of the board, while white took profit in the lower-left.

The most interesting part is still to follow tomorrow, on the second day of this game. I’m covering the Kisei 2007 event on 361points.com.