Go opening terminology

In the game of go, there is some specialised terminology for go openings. The precise meanings of Japanese language terms is often misunderstood. See go opening theory for details on actual play.

A go whole-board opening refers to an opening sequence of plays, almost always laid out the standard 19×19 go board. Because of the symmetry of the board (eight-fold), there are certain conventions about displaying opening moves traditional in Japan. These do not necessarily apply in China or Korea, but naturally in speaking of an 'opening' one never needs to distinguish openings related by symmetry.

The Japanese term for the opening phase of the game is "joban", but this is not used in English. Instead it is very common to use "fuseki", a Japanese term that has a literal meaning of 'scattering of stones'. This really refers, therefore, to the way the initial plays are distributed around the sides and corners. If the game begins just in one corner, which is rare for high-level play but more common with novices, this is not really "fuseki". Also, "fuseki" may be commonly used as a description for the pattern adopted by Black, the first player, for example for Black 1-3-5. This ignores White 2 and White 4, and so is really a name for a side formation (for example Chinese opening) or perhaps a diagonal formation (for example "tasukiboshi", where Black 1 and Black 3 are at 4-4 points in the north-east and south-west corners). The Korean-language term equivalent to "fuseki" is "poseok".

There are also go corner openings. There are many thousands of these standard variations known, related to developments in just one 10×10 corner of the board. In English, they are almost always called "joseki", but one should be aware that "joseki" is not a synonym of "corner opening", but of "standard sequence". That is because the literal meaning in Japanese is of "set" (i.e. fixed or settled) "stones". There are "joseki" in Go that do not relate to the corner openings. The Korean term equivalent to "joseki" is "jeongseok", often transliterated "jungsuk".

In Japanese the 10-10 point on the board (i.e. the center) is called "tengen". An opening play at "tengen" is a kind of experimental opening, and has at times in history been controversial. It may lead to what is called mirror go, in Japanese "manego", in which Black imitates White by playing diagonally opposite with respect to the centre stone. There is another style, also called mirror go, where from the beginning of the game White imitates Black in a diagonally-opposite way. The first kind was interesting, for strong players, before the introduction of "komidashi", i.e. compensation points for second play. The second kind became interesting only "after" the introduction of "komidashi".