Which openings should DDKs learn and how to learn them?

Teaching
21

In many games, the nature of opening study depends on the size of the board, which is what governs how much the pieces in different areas can interact with one another.

Chess has a small board, so openings must be studied as entire discrete variations.
If we played Go on a much larger board, like 29 x 29, then the corners and some areas of the side and centre would have very little impact on each other and there would be no concept of whole-board opening.
19x19 Go is in the middle: the early stones that we place on the corners and sides do affect each other noticeably, but only to a limited extent.

So it is that we can think of the opening in Go, to oversimplify, as like a modern computer program. We don’t write the entire program procedurally: we abstract the components of it into separately-coded functions, which we design to return to us a certain type of result.

The joseki can be regarded as these functions. Our consideration of the opening is, for many players, essentially modular – and the stronger we are, the greater the growth from modular to comprehensive thinking as we become more attuned to the ways in which the corners are connected.

When I play against a DDK, their main mistakes in the first stage of the game are almost never in their whole-board opening strategy, but instead in local corner variations.

I agree with Goule that whole-board thinking is not very important at DDK level, especially below 15k. In this rank band, I’d recommend to study a small set of intentionally simple joseki and quasi-joseki. Focus on not making major mistakes in the corners, and punishing obvious mistakes by the opponent in simple ways. If you have to submit to a forcing move and lose a couple of points, it’s not important.

If all you do below 15k is try to avoid making either 1) bad 2) complicated or 3) unnecessary moves in the corners, I think you’ll be winning at least three quarters of your games.

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23

It’s worth noting that after I stopped playing the orthodox fuseki, I improved a lot. That’s just my personal experience, and I don’t at all believe the orthodox to be a bad choice for weak players. And my mistakes in these games have nothing to do with the orthodox! – yet, I improved. A placebo?

Game 1 https://online-go.com/game/7621392

9: Not small, but not as big as any normal move like H17 or O3.
13: I miss the key point E16, and I also allow White to cramp me on the right side, where (supposing I’d made some exchanges around E16 in sente) I’d rather approach directly or invade.
27: Also allowing White to cramp me with J17 or N17. Nowadays I’d attach at P17 and try to get a three-space base.

Game 2: https://online-go.com/game/7634980

9: A little weak, even though White messed up. I’d try for E2 D3, E4 D5, K3.
17: An odd spot… no doubt it does enclose something, but I wouldn’t even consider it now. I’d be looking at B13 C12 D13; or C12 B11 F12; or perhaps just E17.
19: I’m going to be charitable to past bugcat and say I probably misclicked. Still, I don’t really like R12, I’d maybe try Q11.
25: Really small.

Game 3, actually the earliest: https://online-go.com/game/7610757

7: It seems that I didn’t like to respond to my hoshi being approached. This isn’t wrong persay, but I don’t think I took this strategy for the right reasons.
9: C3 is the key point.
13, 15: Even though I don’t have the ladder, I shouldn’t destroy my E3 push-and-cut aji.
21: At least even then, I had some good instincts ^^
23: C10 is the only move!
27: Either push and cut is good for me, but this is kinda cackhanded.
35: You can’t just ignore an attackable group like that, past bugcat!
37: Not the way to approach a corner…

Now let’s see yours, Alex

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24

I just remembered a key part of my experience at 15k, that I must have mentally repressed at some point.

There were a significant number of players who thought that they had hit on an entirely novel metagame: they’d start in the centre and gradually expand with stones about five spaces apart, with the idea that they could cover a large space efficiently and avoid any fighting.

The irritating thing is that at 15k, although I could usually beat them it was still not hard to lose if I made a couple of careless mistakes in the later game, because they would end up so thick in the centre that they controlled all ladders etc.

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25

21k https://online-go.com/game/3142564
No pattern. Random center moves. My only two concepts: “my big area” and “opponents big area”.
18k https://online-go.com/game/3412183
Rather normal 10 opening moves but neither player has any idea how to continue and it becomes similar to above
16k https://online-go.com/game/3966715
No patterns. Now I definitely understand what a group is. Establishing little outposts near corners and sides and making sure they have eyes. Much stronger than above
14k https://online-go.com/game/4113733
No patterns. Just slappin stones in whichever corner or side has free space. Stones die but it’s ok because there is always another area to contest.
10k https://online-go.com/game/5376204
No pattern. Ok, there is a 3-move pattern: a 4-4 being double approached. Both players take corners and sides and fight a little. This looks like an actual game.

Looking at these games I conclude that DDK should not care about the opening. Just make sure the first 4 moves are in corners and then keep adding moves to 1. corners 2. sides 3. center.
My biggest strength improvement is obviously from a better understanding of groups. Where a new group can be created, which group may be in danger, which opponents group is weak.

8 Likes
26

Well, there seems to be a lot of different view here - let me just add my two cent:

When I was in ddk territory, played a lot of Sanrensei - about 90% of my games started with this fuseki. I read up a bit on the theory behind it, and over time, I became familiar with different approaches, my enemy would choose. I found this to be very helpful - whenever I was black I could lead the game into a familiar pattern - at least for the beginning. I think it’s helpful if you can reduce the complexity of the game a little. Of course, this only works, if your are black. However, if you are white and you opponent plays sanrensei, you can feel confident to pick one of the strategies that you had the biggest problems defending again.
Wich is a really nice moment: Even as a ddk, you can make a strategic decision, based on your experience, not your because a book, or some other player told you so.

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27

Should we perhaps break this into its own thread?

Like, Reviewing old games: what have you learnt?

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28

I know I shouldn’t reply to more than one person in the same post.

It depends on what you mean by fuseki.

I’ll look over my games but it’ll take a bit of time on a phone.

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30

Focus on the simple opening and then only the basic variant. Complicated openings are hard to learn and even harder to understand and play. Don’t go looking for trouble.
After a few moves into the opening phase one of the players will do something not in the book, and from then on you are on your own. Use common sense and time to decide on what move is best for you. Connect your stones (with one or two space jumps), form healthy group shapes. Prevent your opponent from connecting and forming healthy groups. Play moves that are both offensive and defensive at the same time.
What is more important however is having fun, exploring the possibilities and learning from your (opponents) mistakes.

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