I am currently replaying Old Chinese games from the Ming and Qing dynasties and noticed that this is a very common joseki:
Why is it no longer used?
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It’s probably fine for kyu players, but white is a bit thin and black is over concentrated, so neither is really happy.
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It’s possible black will just tenuki after p2
But if they answer then as a follow up something like Q3 is annoying.
Or maybe black can still try to 3-3 to connect out or live?
aim for a shape like
It’s probably not bad necessarily.
The white large (rather than small) knight response to approaching a 4-4 was the standard response long ago. IIRC Go Seigen was instrumental in popularising the advantages of the now-standard small-knight in the early-mid 20th century, which previously was considered a bit slow (his judgement was that the thickness/strength of it was adequate compensation). Another important reason large knight was popular in ancient China but less so now is they played with group tax back then, which means black is reluctant to soon exploit one of the major downsides of the large-knight, that you can invade at 3-3 and live easily, because that results in separate groups and thus a loss of points. You can see this impact of group tax on opening strategy too with KataGo: with group tax rules it doesn’t like to 3-3 invade 4-4s so much, instead playing a more globally connected approaching 4-4s style like humans did pre-AlphaGo.
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q-4 is one of the four fixed stones in the ancient Chinese rules.
The order is as follows:
B: o-3
W: p-2
B: l-3
W: r-7
B: o-2 is actually usually played later, instead black often either approach another corner or makes a two space extension left. But sooner or later black usually plays o-2
I must admit that sometimes I play with the old Chinese rules with diagonal bases on 4-4, group tax, area scoring, and white as first player.