Welcome to the GoBase.org Fuseki Dictionary. The dictionary will enable you to perform fuseki (opening) 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 program GoBase.

While the fixed set of patterns presented below is convenient to explore the vast universe of fuseki 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.

One of the problems while creating a WWW interface for an opening dictionary is how to deal with the vast amount of opening patterns possible in the game of Go. There are literally thousands of possible patterns after just the first 4-6 moves played. The index below is based on the excellent set of books Kihon Fuseki Jiten (Basic Fuseki Dictionary, edited by Rin Kaiho).
The main reason for choosing an existing index is that it will enable you to study the fuseki using these books while using the online dictionary to fetch up-to-date examples of each of the fuseki types coming straight from the tough battle grounds of professional Go. The combination of the two might help you deepening your knowledge and understanding of the opening stages in the game of Go. Things which you might be interested to learn from the professional games are:

• Which joseki fits best in a certain fuseki pattern
• What are the places to fight in the fuseki pattern
• Which fuseki types are most frequently played and by whom
• Which fuseki types are currently fashionable
• How do fuseki patterns evolve over the years

The dictionary is divided in two parts. The first part deals with all komoku style openings as for example the famous Shusaku fuseki type.

The second part deals with the modern hoshi style openings, like ni-ren sei (two hoshi stones in a row) and san-ren sei (three hoshi stones in a row), both fuseki types intensively investigated and practised by the famous and popular Japanese professional Takemiya Masaki, the diagonal hoshi fuseki and the Chinese opening. The low variation of the latter adopted by the Japanese professional Kato Masao and the high version especially popular with the Japanese professional Hane Yasumasa.

The final chapter of part II deals with very creative (and rare) patterns which have been tried out, especially during the shin-fuseki era (beginning of the 20th century, most notably the very daring experiments by Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru.

Part I

Chapter 1 - Shusaku fuseki
Chapter 2 - Komoku diagonal
Chapter 3 - Komoku parallel
Chapter 4 - Komoku miscellaneous
Chapter 5 - Miscellaneous low patterns

Part II

Chapter 1 - Ni-ren sei, San-ren sei
Chapter 2 - Hoshi diagonal
Chapter 3 - Hoshi parallel
Chapter 4 - Chinese low and high
Chapter 5 - Tengen and other high patterns

Part III (special requests)

Chapter 1 - The small Chinese Fuseki
Chapter 2 - The Kobayashi Fuseki
Chapter 3 - The Ni-Rensei Fuseki
Chapter 4 - Tengen!

When your browser supports client-side image maps (Netscape and Microsoft Explorer do) then a special service will be available to you:

• Clicking near the center of the image will do a whole board matching
• Clicking near the right side hoshi point will only match the right edge
• Clicking near the left side hoshi point will only match the left edge
• Clicking near the top side hoshi point will only match the top edge
• Clicking near the bottom side hoshi point will only match the bottom edge

This enables you to build variation trees of for example ni-ren sei (part II, chapter 1) or the high Chinese fuseki pattern (part II, chapter 4) disregarding the exact position of the opponents stones. It also enables you to investigate sub-patterns which occur in the full-board positions.