Kobayashi plays “Kobayashi Fuseki” in Kisei game 4
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007Game 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.
