38 Basic Joseki

Elementary Go Series #2

by Kiyoshi Kosugi, James Davies

In the game of go, the opening moves focus on the corners of the board. Over the thousands of years of go playing, this aspect of the game has been intensively studied and a large number of opening formulas, or josekis, have been discovered and refined. Every go player needs to have a working knowledge of the basic ones. 38 Basic Joseki cuts incisively through the labyrinth of joseki to give the reader a solid grounding in the subject. Working steadily out from the 3–3 point to the 4–5 point, it surveys the principal variations of the 38 most common corner patterns, pointing out the key ideas in each and showing the reader how to choose and use josekis in relation to other stones on the board.

Genres: Go, Reference, Games, Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Aniket]

Poorly placed in the series. Players at the right level for In The Beginning and Tesuji probably won't get much out of reading this book, since it basically just presents a lot of sequences players should be familiar with without in-depth explanations. As a reference, this book is clearly less complete than Ishida Yoshio's Dictionary of Basic Joseki, and doesn't add much value beyond the freely available Kogo's Joseki Dictionary.

It's not a bad read, if you are feeling lost about joseki, but it is not the best option available.

[Joy]

Just as good as the other books in this series, but probably less essential reading than Tesuji.

[Jamie CULPON]

日本語では、「定石」を勉強する時に「3 stones」is an “abstract concept”, but for many English speaking students this sounds “scary” rather than a reminder that joseki are not “fixed patterns” but the start of a long process of studying igo/go.

This book is not for “true beginners” in the sense that it remains a useful reference for players still “trapped” in kyu/amateur play. It’s an excellent quick reference that I still look at regularly, although I am unsure if I will ever be a single-digit kyu player again.

Wonderful gift for anyone who appreciates that “simple” games like shogi, go, and chess are in fact marvelously complex and full of a long history of advancement.

You don’t need to be a pro player to learn a lot from this very small book. A gem, to this player. (~12 kyu last time I was on KGS)

[Felipe]

This book provides explains some basic josekis. But be warned that these josekis may have variations beyond what is explained in the book. For those you might want to take a look at Kogo's joseki dictionary.
As in any Go book, some of the diagrams might be too dense, especially if you are at the beginner level. For those cases, you might want to use a Go board. Alternatively, an interactive version of this book in SmartGo books: https://gobooks.com/books.html which gives you an inline interactive board that you can interact with.

[Jon]

Perfect intro. AI has made some of the specifics outdated, but the principles are still sound and worth knowing.

[Andy]

Not bad. It is very fundamental. Just not as expansive or interesting as it could be, I guess?
Maybe I was expecting too much?

[Jdl]

I skimmed this at 12 kyu, because a player of that level really should not be trying to memorize joseki. I still refer to it during my post-game analysis. It is very useful to read the commentary on joseki that occurred in my games after the fact.

Certainly, 38 joseki isn't remotely exhaustive, but the point of this book is to explain why certain positions are joseki. A player who is willing to study the variations and commentary in this book will be able to apply those principles even when the stones aren't in exactly the same position as the examples.

It stresses understanding over memorization, which I liked.

[cook777]

A lot of people seem to give this book bad talk because of how limited it is. I think "38 basic joseki" should have told you that. (I don't mean this in a rude way.) Its just to give a foundation of joseki to go on from there.

If you don't really know much of any joseki its a fine book to get a basic ideas of how joseki work. Granted it been a long time since I read it. For reference book of joseki there much better ones. (just as well get a free online sgf joseki database then this book.)

[Steve]

GO

[Fernando Torre]

Very good introduction to a variety of basic joseki. It's a good way to get some exposure to many of them.

[Andrew]

The content is extremely dry; just like any other joseki book it runs through a whole bunch of them and their variations.

Probably better as a reference than something to read.

[Tim]

They say you lose two stones memorizing joseki and gain 4 by studying them. Same as learning programming, studying semantics beats memorizing syntax.