Welcome to the GoBase.org Joseki Dictionary. The dictionary will enable you to perform joseki (established sequences usually situated in the corner of the Go board) searches in thousands of online professional Go games. Each query will result in a list of all games featuring the selected opening pattern and besides a variation tree containing all encountered continuations merged and ordered by hit frequency. The queries are performed by the batch version of the Go database and search engine GoBase.

While the fixed set of patterns presented below is convenient to explore the vast universe of joseki patterns in an orderly fashion the GoBase repository service might be more convenient to study your own games and to establish your own collection of patterns. It will enable you to keep track of any developments in your own repertoire of opening patterns for example.

The amount of joseki is enormous as you will notice while browsing through the overview below. Therefore a repertoire was compiled especially for beginners (<= 5 kyu) but also worthwhile for stronger players. It is very well possible to play a Go game with the knowledge of only a subset of maybe 30 simple joseki variations. In the introduction I explain when to play which line of joseki and give various considerations. The overview contains examples of professional games to illustrate in which typical situations one applies certain variations.

The index below is based on the excellent joseki dictionary Ishida Joseki Jiten, Seibundo Publishing Company Joseki Jiten (Joseki Dictionary, edited by Ishida Yoshio and published by the Seibundo Publishing Company).
The main reason for choosing an existing index is that it will enable you to study the joseki using these books while using the online dictionary to fetch up-to-date examples of each of the joseki coming straight from the tough battle grounds of professional Go. The combination of these two might help you deepening your knowledge and understanding of the joseki sequences in the game of Go. Things which you might be interested to learn from the professional games are:

• Which joseki are applied in certain fuseki pattern
• What are the follow-up moves in a joseki pattern:
  • What are the attacking moves
  • What are the defensive moves
  • What are the forcing moves
  • What are the endgame moves
• Which joseki are most frequently played and by whom
• Which joseki are currently fashionable
• How do joseki evolve over the years

The dictionary index is organized as a large tree of continuations with top-level six main branches:

Part 1 - (4,3) komoku

Part 2 - (5,3) mokuhazushi

Part 3 - (5,4) taka-mokuhazushi

Part 4 - (4,4) hoshi

Part 5 - (3,3) san-san

Part 6 - (4,4) hoshi miscellaneous