Redmond's Reviews, Episode 6: Kobayashi Koichi 9P v. Michael Redmond 9P

We've had cases when pros simply considered something bad, and then it got widely adopted by everyone, like a 4-4 point. Pre 1890 or so, pros apparently felt it was slightly inferior to other corner moves. Now, it's the most basic corner move everyone learns, and it isn't even the case that it's hard to use or requires great reading to play. (In fact, it's the once common moves like 3-5 and 4-5 beloved by ancient pros are hard to use)

If you're going to take into account that "you [don't] have the strength to utilize the outcome of an early 3-3 invasion even slightly compared to how AlphaGo does it", shouldn't you also take into account that your opponent also won't be able to utilize what they get out of a variation as well as AG, so things will be equal? Maybe you are worried that though a variation produces a result that's equal from AG's perspective, from the kyu perspective, one side gets an easy to use position, while the other gets a hard to use one. That could be so, but wouldn't that be a great reason to play the variation at least for one of the players?

The difference between pros and AG is not all that huge compared to the difference between either and us. If you say: "maybe it works for AG but that doesnt mean that it freaking works for a SDK", how seriously would you take someone telling others not to play a variation that pros like because "maybe it works for a pro but that doesnt mean that it freaking works for a SDK"? Well, sometimes that really would be a reasonable thing to say (see taisha, avalanche and other horrors). Most of the time though, we all joyously try out pro-invented stuff, like Kobayashi, Chinese variations, all the joseki ever except some especially monstrous ones, etc, and it generally works out alright even with our inferior skills. I think we should similarly not be afraid to try out simple AG-invented stuff, too.

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