Black starts in the lower right

General Go Discussion
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These days, it seems a very large fraction of players that I play with, when they take black they start in the lower right corner. What happened in the past few years that allowed this faux pas to proliferate? In over 20 years of playing I’ve never seen anything like it – online you have to start either in your upper right or your lower left when playing black.

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Nah, online it doesnt really matter at all xD

The habit of “black playing on top-right” is just a very old-school etiquette from playing on real boards. It makes it slightly easier for white to answer in the adjacent corner, assuming that white is a right-handed person sitting on the other side of the board.

That being said, i still always open at the top-right as black, guess old habits die slowly >__>

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It also makes it easier to study and remember fuseki patterns when they are in the same orientation, e.g Chinese opening down the right side.

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Let’s note that online we don’t watch the board in the same way as IRL, facing each other. Already a debate surging if you want to replicate the IRL habit

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One of my many problems with Go is that I often fall into thinking “I have no choice, I must play here or else…”. When I watch stronger players, they often make responses which are unexpected and alternative.

With this ^^ in mind, I sometimes open in the top left corner. I realize that due to rotational and/or lateral symmetry it’s functionally equivalent to opening top right, but I do it to remind myself that I have choice. ← I’m not even joking.

I also feel that opening on the “top” has a slight advantage in modern times because most people play on vertical monitors. A stone at the “top” feels like it has the advantage of gravity working for it, tending it to bear down on stones at the “bottom” of the monitor. U = mgh, more potential energy because greater ‘h’. I’m mostly joking with this one.

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Sometimes I think this way also but by the same logic the bottom has more stability.

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says it’s a tradition in Japan, but what about other countries?

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