Dictionary of Basic Joseki Vol.1: The 3-4 Point, Yoshio Ishida and John Power (translator)

This brilliant and original 3 volume survey of joseki, written by a leading Japanese professional, is not only a practical, well-organized reference to help you chart your course through the myriad complications of standard joseki, but also an illuminating analysis of vital components such as tesuji and shape. It covers all important joseki, as well as joseki mistakes and alternatives. It is equally valuable as a reference work and as a primer in the fundamentals of Go theory which underlie joseki.

Comments & Reviews

Many people believe that “studying” joseki is bad because they equate “study” with “memorize.” The important parts of Joseki include shape/pattern recognition and reading. This set of books will not help with the latter, but it is the perfect tool to train the former.

We all want to get stronger as quickly as possible. Getting stronger includes learning Joseki, and the best methods for doing this are (in order): Review of your own games and Watching others games.

When reviewing your own games, compare the joseki used with Ishida’s dictionary. Read the comments and try to understand each of the moves. Learning from your own mistakes is always best, and this book will often help show you where you went wrong (other joseki sources are also good to use but there won’t be any pro comments).

Instead of reviewing pro games to learn Joseki (it’s still good to do ;)) you can simply read Ishida’s books and play each diagram out on the goban once (if you’re stronger and can read more deeply, the diagrams may be enough). Covering each diagram once and reading the comments does not memorize the joseki, but the more you do this, the more you will understand and remember, and this is the path you want to take.

The age of the books results in a noticable lack of new joseki, but this is not a problem when using these books as a study tool. I still give them 5 stars because all of the Joseki Fundamentals are contained therein. Studying these books results in understanding even the modern Joseki that are not included.

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I did a first impressions review of this set on my blog back on January 10, 2006. Suffice to say, my impression hasn’t changed. It’s an excellent set with which to study joseki.

Ishida explains with great detail:

• What variations can arise
• How some variations may be used from a whole-board perspective
• Why one variation may be preferred over the other and why you may not want to play the variation or the joseki
• Whether one may lose sente by following a variation and, in some cases, how to retain sente
• Which variations are slack or aggressive
• Why the stones must be played
• What critical points for either color arise as the shapes evolve
• What weaknesses exist that can be exploited
• What countermeasures and tesuji can be applied to the shapes

This set is borderline core-library material. I really like it because I can easily research any particular branch of a joseki after I’ve encountered it; this helps me understand what went wrong and what to consider when it appears again in future games.

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This whole series of 3 books was written over 30 years ago and since then there have been many inovations in joseki. So it is not modern joseki primer in which you can expect to find the move with wich your opponent defeated you last night. But it is a very thorough coverage of joseki as they existed at the time. Given that you should not just memorize joseki, but instead understand the meanings behind the moves, it is still an excellent starting point for the serious student of Go. It is, really the only one in English which is a complete encyclopedia of joseki.

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