This is a starting page for articles on jōseki analysis. These articles are written to provide kyu-level players with an in-depth working knowledge of jōseki.
Amateur players often take the wrong approach to studying jōseki. There is a persistent tendency to focus on what is jōseki rather than why it is jōseki. This is embodied by a wide reliance on jōseki dictionaries such as Kogo’s. Such dictionaries, while useful compilations in and of themselves, are typically misused by amateurs because they are written in a style geared toward professional players. In particular, jōseki dictionaries are good at listing out lots of variations, but they typically fail to discuss the context in which each jōseki is used. The advent of AI has also exacerbated this trend, whereby players consult AI for clues on the opening, and emerge with sequences suggested by the AI but without any explanation for why they are suggested.
In reality, context is everything with jōseki. The most important aspect of studying jōseki is understanding when a certain jōseki is selected over the other candidates. This decision ultimately comes down to considerations about the global board state and the direction of play. It is almost always preferable to play a locally suboptimal sequence with the correct direction of play, compared to a locally optimal jōseki with an incorrect direction of play. The latter is akin to using an actual dictionary to find a word starting with the letter “A”, but without reading the definitions of the words or how they are used in a sentence.
In the articles gathered here, we aim to always provide the proper context for a given jōseki, so that we can understand how various jōseki are applied in different situations. Our primary aims are threefold:
Jōseki must always be discussed in tandem with their direction of play and global interactions. The emphasis is on choosing the right jōseki for the situation, not on listing out countless variations without context.
The middlegame aji left in a position should be part of the discussion whenever possible. Failing to understand the aji in a jōseki is like knowing how to play the first ten moves but not the next forty.
We aim our exposition to be accessible to kyu-level players. For this reason we will emphasize relatively simple and common jōseki. At times we will in fact suggest ways to avoid complications. Complicated jōseki are often sensitive to global considerations to the point that they are effectively impossible to utilize perfectly by amateurs.
The jōseki analyses are intended to be read by players with a decent understanding of the strength and weakness of groups. For those who have yet to internalize this knowledge, we suggest that you first peruse the relevant articles in the Concepts section.