Hi Guo Juan,

As a 10 kyu player I want to ask a few questions about learning Joseki.

For me learning Joseki is pretty hard, besides learning several patterns by heart I don't really get to understand them. From the book "Lessons in the fundamentals of Go" I read the following phrase: "Every stone played by both sides in a joseki is the best move, so it is important to know the reason for it. If you can convince yourself as to why the stone is played where it is and why it is a good move, then you have done some studying."

So besides learning the patterns I took my board out and tried to deviate from the standard sequences and discover why these joseki moves are bad and how to punish a deviation. But really I think I do not get it.

To explain as to how I currently think I have attached the following example.

[goban sgf=https://openstudyroom.org/forum/attachment/56/ move=10]For example I understand that the two space jump (marked stone) can't be cut, but why would playing at A be bad? For me playing at A would also seem fine especially when I have a white stone in the other corner (D4). How do I need to think about these situations?[/goban]

This is just an example to explain my level of understanding to you.

Another question is pretty specific. But nevertheless about the same subject. To help me understand joseki's better I started to read the book "All about joseki". This book helps me quite a bit to answer the question as to why a stone is played. from the first example in the book the following sitation occurs:

[goban sgf=https://openstudyroom.org/media/machina/attachments/joseki_questions.sgf diagram=true width=600px coord=true][/goban]

The book states that move 4 defends the move at A. I get that, but why is the move at E18 and is D18 bad? How can I learn to discover these things for myself?

Many thanks in advance!

Sincerely, Patrick

I edited this post multiple times, sorry for any confusion caused as I had trouble mastering the SGF viewer.