Joseki ABCs or WTH is Happening in the Corner
Your first joseki guide
The game has just started, you played the first corner sequence and something clearly went wrong. Sounds familiar? Those are issues with playing the initial corner variations — joseki.
In this course you will learn the main simple joseki patterns and understand what they are made of. How not to screw things up if your opponent chooses a difficult variation and how to make it complicated if necessary. The joseki will no longer seem like scary sharp-toothed monsters, more like a set of useful tools. What’s left now is to choose a suitable one at the right moment.
Suitable for: 15–7k who are already familiar with the basic opening principles.
Course Contents
Teacher
Vadim Efimenko 4d
Vadim Efimenko is a co-founder of Go Magic and the creative force behind its fun, festive, and modern feel. A Go enthusiast since 2006, he focuses more on research and exploration than tournaments—though he holds a 6 dan rank on Fox and has competed as a 5 dan amateur in China.
A professional linguist, Vadim speaks English, Russian, Chinese, and some French. He studied Go in China with pro Yan An 7p and spent five years living and working there. Beyond Go, he enjoys traveling, discovering new cultures, and playing riichi mahjong. At Go Magic, he leads content creation efforts.

Course Includes
Reviews

Loved it! Super helpful and light introduction to joseki. Just complicated enough.
The course is good. i think it goes from simple to hard a little too fast though.
I spent the most time on this lesson than previous lessons. This is the brick wall that abated my pride and was also the most exciting. Yes, "do not memorize joseki, but study it."
... where the SDK adventures begin
excellent course for beginning to understand joseki
good
Thank You!
Comprehensive and detailed enough to be revisited at many levels. Honestly, game changing already in the few opportunities I've had to apply these principles.
As a ~1K player, I was expecting the course to be too much basic. Instead, due to the great explanations, I learned a lot of things to better understand josekis. The explanation of AI impact is also great
Should a beginner memorize joseki? Maybe not, but it is useful to start familiarizing yourself with them and understanding them. This course is a good introduction to standard corner variations.
The good: * The amount of josekis was digestible * The reasoning behind every joseki is explained * How to react if something is not done according to the joseki The not so good: * Some of the courses are a bit chaotic and sometimes I had the feeling of missing something. * Some of the josekis where only mentioned briefly which made it hard to memorize. An overview at the end would have been great
I already knew most of the joseki ideas but this course sealed them together very well. Great way to learn the basic skills and not skip anything important
Muy buen curso. Enseña josekis básicos y estrategias en determinadas situaciones. Amé la cita de Bruce Lee, muy apropiada para los objetivos del curso.
It’s definitely a changeling course. It's mentioned in the videos not to memorize joseki, then the quiz asks you to replay joseki step by step—sometimes for both Black and White. Perhaps the idea isn’t to avoid memorization altogether, but to stress understanding why each stone is placed on a particular intersection.
Useful, but hard to remember. Providing a visualised decision tree would be helpful (for example, in PDF format)
Excelent course!! Thanks a lot Vadim for great way of presenting the choices that you have to make at the beggining of the game, and that you will have to live with them until the end of the game
In his final wise words, Vadim encourages us to play a few josekis many times instead of learning them out of a textbook. Ironically I don't feel like I know the taught josekis very well, because the exercises do not focus in repetitive learning but punishing wrong decisions. Emphasize more on gradual setup and I am happy to give a five star rating. However, Vadim enthusiasm is a big asset.
I appreciated the modern variations as well as the simpler traditional options—especially that they are clearly presented as such. I thought the amount of information was good for a beginning level course, but the quizzes are more difficult than the content (for example, in terms of understanding certain punishments) and memorization oriented.
Tricky. The urge to simply memorize is great, and it doesn't help that the quizzes ask for step-by-step reproduction. Understanding why each move is optimal by itself is difficult.
I appreciate how Vadim urges the player to build a foundation through understanding this basic joseki repertoire. I found taking lots of notes necessary to absorb the material. It would be nice if there was a pdf to accompany the material. Who will write the updated version of 38 Basic Joseki?