The games of Shusaku are great study material for kyu players. While the joseki are a bit out of date, because there was no komi black had a large advantage and often played conservatively in the opening, the middle game fighting tends to be spectacular and the endgame sequences are modern pro level. To that end I just bit the bullet and picked up what I think is the most complete collection of his games and I thought we could go over some of the interesting points of a game here. This is a game from 1839 when Shusaku, still known by his childhood name Torajiro, was only nine or ten years old when this game was played. Shusaku is black and this is before the invention of komi so playing black is an advantage. His opponent is a 2 dan player.
First of all you'll notice the old fuseki style. All corner openings start at the 3-4 point and there are a number of other quirks like the order of 5 and 7 as well as playing 1 and 3 in the same corner. Black's move at 7 would almost certainly be played at the 4-4 which would prepare for an extension on both the bottom and the left but the 4-4 was not played at the time. As it stands 8 is a well timed approach. Black 13 is an often overlooked variation on the joseki that prepares to extend up the left side and puts more pressure on the three White stones than a one point jump on the 3rd line which is by far the most common variation of this joseki.
White's decision to tenuki and enclose the lower right corner is a little suspect. It makes an invasion of the bottom look attractive. I would have thought about this variation for white 12 to create a more balanced formation across the bottom:
This way there are no obvious entry points into the bottom for black. If we go back to the sequence played in the game the lower side looks very inviting for black.
As a matter of fact Shusaku wastes no time at all and strikes at 15, robbing the three white stones of a base and breaking into the bottom. Next time we'll go into how the situation plays out.
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