Joseki museum · 24

Which AI joseki retired, and why preserve them?

A vanished recommendation was not necessarily refuted. Timing may have changed, search may have been unstable, or training may have repaired a blind spot. A museum preserves why an answer once made sense and why it later failed.

1. Separate retirement from error

   A line may remain locally playable but no longer fit whole-board timing. Local refutation, faster replacement, and simple disappearance from fashion need different labels.

2. Preserve the model identity of its era

   Without network, engine, rules, komi, and visits, an artifact may be software default rather than AI history. Every exhibit needs an answer passport.

3. Repeated joseki blind spots merit repair

   In a KataGo opening-joseki issue, the developer explains that recurring shapes are valuable training targets because fixes pay off across many games; sharp lines such as the flying dagger have benefited from targeted starts.

4. Search instability is not historical overthrow

   If one network changes its first move across budgets or symmetries, an old screenshot lacks enough evidence to define an era. Label it search-unstable rather than conquered by a newer AI.

5. Timing retires more often than coordinates

   Many AI-era changes are not illegal moves but over-completion: too many exchanges before tenuki. A shorter line can let the same local skeleton return in a new order.

6. Record revival conditions

   A retired move can regain value under another komi, ruleset, ladder, outside formation, or reply order. The label lists conditions for revival instead of a permanent cross.

7. A museum transfers reasons, not dead answers

   The useful exhibit joins old rationale, new refutation, and surviving concepts—thickness, sente, ladders, and aji. Players learn judgment instead of collecting expired coordinates.