Two Space High Approach to Komoku

Last night, I played a game against nugatory, where he approached my komoku three times with the two space high approach. He also played tengen as his first move (he was W) so it was a somewhat unconventional game.



The very first time someone played this approach against me, I wasn't sure what to play, and kind of automatically answered Black A, since that's what I often play with the low 2 space approach. Made sense that it should be the same, right? Wrong! I looked it up later, and found out that A is considered submissive. So much for that. Ishida shows B to E as corner replies for Black.

Ishida also goes into the history of the move "O16 is a light move. White is not concerned about corner influence but is satisfied if he can get Black to answer here, as this means preventing B from making a corner enclosure, while keeping sente. From B's point of view, there is nothing wrong with replying as W wants, while he can also try to make W answer him. This approach move was very popular in the 1910's and almost all variations have been completely explored."

In my game, I chose C, which is "a territory-oriented move which forestalls the W attachment in the corner. W finds it a little submissive to respond to this move, so nowadays B most often plays like this."

W did respond and we ended up with the standard joseki:



Today, I spent some time with Ishida on this approach, and saw I could have gone for the large avalanche, but wouldn't have been good in my game. I just hadn't even realized I had that option.

Interesting.