Opening repertoires

What openings do you play most?

Here are my favourites.

  • dual 3-3s
  • dual 3-4s (often developing to 3-4 + shimari)
  • dual 5-4s (rotating)
  • the Manchurian / 5-4 high Chinese (formerly regular high Chinese)
  • sanrensei w/ two space high pincer (formerly tight pincer)

I almost never play a nirensei that doesn’t immediately become a sanrensei, or any mixed 4-4 and 3-4 set up that isn’t a high Chinese.

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As White:

  • Two stars and then answer, pincer, or ignore the approaches depending on how I feel.

  • 4-4 + 3-4, but only if Black played at least one 3-4 or 5-4 or 5-3 point. I don’t like to be the only one getting their 3-4 approached. I’d rather be able to reciprocate.

As Black:

  • Two stars and then approach. I almost never invade a 4-4 point in the early opening. I prefer to make whole-board structures rather than scattered small groups.

  • Orthodox with a high enclosure

  • Mark II Kobayashi with a high enclosure

  • 4-4 + 5-4, which often transposes to orthodox or mark II

  • Cross openings with two stars or 4-4 + 3-4

  • Sometimes I’ll approach on move 3 to see what White does

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In all my games, I start with two star points. (Not for any particular strategic reason, it just looks nice).

On 9x9 I also play at the star point as black.

On 13x13 I usually start with two star points, but recently I’ve been playing with one star point and one 3-4 point.

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Always nirensei as both colours. Always approach 3-4 low, and about 50/50 between approaching a 4-4 and invading it.
I tend to think my repertoire is more about joseki sequences and post-joseki aji and potential.

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When I’m black I usually play O13-H15-D11 (Sofia Fuseki at Sensei's Library, thanks @bugcat). I change it a bit if white plays on the top. When I dont want to play it (usually because someone asks it) I play the Chinese fuseki or sanrensei.

I didn’t find a valid alternative with white. What I usually do is 2 komokus asking to cross corners, mirrors go or approach every stone played by black.

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Between 6k-3k i played a lot chinese opening. Then a parallel with hoshi+mokuhazushi. Since i dunno, i play whatever from sansan to yonrensei including 33% of orthodox AI maybe.

What’s the Mark II Kobayashi?

but, I think @mark5000 specifically means this (with the "high enclosure’):

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Yes, exactly this. Thank you.

I could have combined three of my Black “openings” as: a star + a 3-4/5-4 enclosure, played in any order, in any orientation.

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Lately i’ve been playing (as black) dual 3-4’s + enclose on move 5, especially if white plays 4-4’s (mmmm tasty 3-3 invasions…)

As white its bit more reactive, but i generally play the first stone at 3-4 facing the diagonal corner of blacks first stone, and after that im mostly just reacting on what happens on the board. It feels that pretty much all fusekis are meant for black to play, as its really hard to implement any kind of strategy when being a move behind the opponent.

I actually downloaded all 81 of my games in the past 2 years. I was already curious to see if playing 3-3 lowers my win rate. (It does lower it from 66% to 50%)

Almost exactly me though I am about 66% approach vs invade. Now that I researched how it affects my winrate, that should go down some :slight_smile:

I usually do 4-4 and 3-4 , 4-4 and 4-4, or 3-4 and 4-3. It depends on what the opponent plays as well.

For me it was the opposite. Limiting my joseki and fuseki to what the modern pros are playing and then studying pro games has definitely boosted my winrate, though it was part of the overall improvement package. But generally I can confidently go toe to toe with much higher ranked players if we both play the modern opening, for example my game vs ternamja recently, which would’ve been him +5 to +7 if I knew the ko sequence in the corner.

Tengen, 5-4 or 5-5
Sometimes a combination of these
But i would not called it a repertoire because i dont know the jousekis and fusekis