T Mark, of London, England, was intrigued by a reference on the servers to a fledgling joseki: White 8 below instead of the usual A. Limiting the extension to A is not in itself unusual, but White normally plays 6 at B if he wants to do that.
There seems to be no written theory about this yet - it has simply been observed in the wild. T Mark therefore decided to venture into the jungle of Clapham with his database binoculars, hoping to shed some light on the mating habits of this mysterious new species. He was rather startled by what he found.
Leaving aside, obviously, the cases where this move came up rather late in the game in response to some tactical situation, what he found was that, in the early fuseki, this move in pro play is almost exclusively played only when paired with a wide shimari by the opponent, including the version used in the Chinese fuseki. The joseki type pattern is the modest peahen - the extravagant shimari shape is the peacock.
We are not strong enough to pontificate authoritatively on what the pro thinking is, though a first pass at the problem is to suggest that it is similar to the micro-Chinese case we have just looked at. White wants to have a tight position on one side of the board so that the argy-bargy he plans on the other side, as he bombards the wide shimari shape, will not impact on it (and, of course, so that the joseki shape does not allow the opponent forcing moves that may be useful on the other side - a possible reason why 6 is at 6 instead of B.
Here we will limit ourselves to showing some examples of the new position mating in the wild. The first example seems to date from mid 2007, when Cho U played it against Yi Ch'ang-ho, as below. In this case, the pro thinking seems to be on a simpler level: White is allowing Black to enclose at 2 and then plans to make him overconcentrated with 3. In that event, White clearly wants to keep 1 away from the strength he builds up with 3, to avoid overconcentration of his own.
Cho U (W) vs. Yi Ch'ang-ho, 2007-07-07
However, there is more than a tinge of the middle game in this example, and there was then something of a hiatus before the new idea appeared in the fuseki proper, at the end of 2007. Our example is by Qiu Jun against Gu Li. Gu answered at Black 2 and then it was a very long time before any play erupted in the upper right.
Qiu Jun (W) vs. Gu Li, 2007-11-13
Here is a case against not a Chinese-type shimari but a wide one nevertheless. The early examples seem to indicate a Chinese origin of this new joseki.
Zou Junjie (W) vs. Li Zhe, 2008-01-31
Qiu Jun also tried it again but against this smaller shimari, playing with Yang Xiaotian (2008-03-22). Yi Ch'ang-ho, however, tried it against an even bigger "shimari"!
Yi Ch'ang-ho (W) vs. Kang Tong-yun, 2008-04-10
Ch'oe Weon-yong likewise was tempted to meet a supershimari this way:
Ch'oe Weon-yong (W) vs. Kim Seong-ryong, 2008-05-11
We have seen no other examples from China (and none from Japan), but there were several other instances in Korea before the new opening seemed to drop out of the charts some time after mid 2008. However, these Korean examples nearly all featured the very, very wide supershimaris.
For completeness, though, we should mention one example of the new joseki against a small shimari. This was in the Korean pro qualification tournament, so may not be a genuine case of pro thinking - more an unformed aping of real pro ideas. On the other hand, both players have since become pros.
An Seong-chun (W) vs. Han Ung-kyu, 2008-04-02
We leave you with the task of deciding what is really going on!
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