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© 1995 by Kiseido Publishing Company and James Davies

Elementary Go Series, Volume 4

Life and Death

by James Davies

Buy the full book at gobooks.com

Following the general pattern of its predecessor Tesuji, this book organizes over two hundred life-and-death problems and examples into thirty-six short sections. Noteworthy features include:

The “status” approach, which takes the reader through the same analysis that he should perform in actual play.

The grouping of the problems around common tesujis — throw-in, placement, etc. — and standard shapes — the one-, two-, and three-space notchers on the sides, the corner L groups, etc.

A logical, step-by-step developement, which makes Life and Death first an excellent text to learn from, then an invaluable reference work to come back to.

Preface to the Second Edition

When I started to play the game of go in the United States, books of life-and-death problems were not available, so I studied the subject on my own by attempting systematically to analyze some of the shapes that kept appearing on the board. This was a time-consuming project. In some cases it took years to reach the right answer. In a few cases, equal time was spent in reaching the wrong answer. Right or wrong, the answers went into the first edition of this book, which, by emphasizing the status of standard groups, has apparently helped many players to win games. The second edition takes the same approach as the first edition and largely contains the same material, but corrects the mistakes that have been pointed out over the years.

A number of people have contributed to this book in various ways. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of the following:

Stuart Dowsey, who, before he left Japan, put together a collection of life-and-death problems into which I dipped two or three times;

James Kerwin, who took time to read the final draft of the first edition and was responsible for a number of corrections and improvements;

my wife Toshiko, who cut and pasted into the manuscript all the eight hundred twenty-two diagrams.

Mark Boon, Richard Hunter, Pierre Colmez, and others who pointed out various errors that remained in the first edition.

James Davies
Yokohama, Japan
August 1, 1996

Copyright Page

Elementary Go Series, Volume 4

Life and Death

by James Davies

Kiseido Publishing Company
Tokyo, Los Angeles, Amsterdam

Published by
Kiseido Publishing Company
Kagawa 4–48–32, Chigasaki-shi,
Kanagawa-ken
Japan 253–0082

Copyright © 1975 by The Ishi Press, Inc. and James Davies

Copyright © 1996 by Kiseido Publishing Company and James Davies

All rights reserved according to international law. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise copied for public or private use without the written permission of the publisher.

ISBN of print edition: 4–906574–13–0

Converted for SmartGo Books by John Mifsud.

Contents

Life and Death

Preface

Copyright Page

Introduction

1. Unsettled Three

The chapters in gray are included only in the full book.

2. Six Die, Eight Live

3. Four- and Five-Space Eyes

4. Rabbity Six

5. One-Space Notchers

6. Shortage of Liberties

7. Two-Space Notchers

8. An Eye in the Stomach

9. Three-Space Notchers

10. False Eyes and Placement Techniques

11. The Door Group is Dead

12. Incomplete Shapes

13. Review Problems

14. To Make One Eye

15. Half Eyes

16. Bent Four in the Corner

17. The One-Two Points, Etc.

18. Placement: Attack and Defense

19. Throw-Ins

20. The L Group

21. The First L+1 Group

22. The Second L+1 Group

23. The L+2 Group

24. The Tripod Group

25. The J Groups

26. Hane for Ko

27. The Long L Group

28. Seki in the Corner

29. The Carpenter’s Square

30. The Weak Carpenter’s Square

31. More Corner Positions

32. Live or Link Up

33. Threat to Capture

34. Under the Stones

35. The Difference a Liberty Makes

36. Building Eye Shape

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Introduction

This book covers the basics of life and death, that is, of eye shape. Everyone who has gone through the maddening experience of having his groups slaughtered right and left by some stronger player in a high-handicap game knows the importance of this subject. Serious life-and-death problems may arise only a few times in the course of the average game, but when they do arise, they deserve to be read out carefully. Mistakes made in them tend to be more costly than any other kind of mistake.

What is the issue in a life-and-death situation? Most life-and-death problems in books seem to be presented in the following manner: Black to play and kill White; or White to play and live; or Black to play and live in ko; etc. This format has the advantage that even without looking at the answer, you usually know when you have solved the problem. Unfortunately, however, during a game there is no one standing at your elbow to tell you that this group can be killed, or that one can be saved in ko, etc.

What you have to do during actual play is to work out the status of each group that comes into question. If a group is alive as it stands, you have to know that, so that you will not make an unneeded move ‘saving’ it. Similarly, you do not want to waste a move making an already dead group deader. Nor do you want to try to kill a live enemy group, unless you are losing and desperate, since that tends only to reinforce it and remove whatever potential you had for making threats against it. On the other hand, if an enemy group is not yet dead, but can be killed, or if a friendly group is not yet alive, but can be saved, you have to know this, and to know the sequence that kills or saves it.

There are two types of status that a group may have: settled, and unsettled. A settled group is one that is dead or alive as it stands; one that, accordingly, neither player should want to touch. Here are two examples.

Dia. 1. Black is alive.

Black has one eye on the right edge: if White plays a, Black can answer at b, and if White plays b, Black can play a in sente, then play c. For his second eye Black can play either d or e, so that even if White takes one of these two points, Black can take the other.

Since Black’s status is settled, White should be in no hurry to play a, e, etc., but should save them for possible use as ko threats. Black, for his part, should not try to play a too early, since in the first place he loses some of what potential remains in his three dead stones if White answers, and in the second place White might ignore Black a to make a big play elsewhere.

Dia. 2. Black is dead.

If Black plays a, White replies at b, and vice versa. Again, Black should not play a or b just to make White respond. He should save the situation for use as a ko threat.

If a group’s status is unsettled, then it lives or dies depending on who makes the next move. For example:

Dia. 3. Black can live. White can kill.

If Black goes first, he will play a, capture the white stone, and be alive, but if White goes first, he will capture with b and Black will be dead. In other words, this group lives or dies according to sente.

Dia. 4. White can live. Black can make a ko.

When a group’s status is unsettled, a ko may be involved, as in Dia. 4. If White goes first he can live unconditionally by playing a or b. If Black goes first, however, he will attack at a, White will answer at b, and there will be a ko fight. One could also say that in this position White is alive in ko, although whether he is really going to live or not depends on how many ko threats he has elsewhere on the board.

This book is organized into sections, each section describing one basic shape or technique and containing several problems. Many of the problems are status problems; you are given a group and asked to determine its status. Answering these problems means finding the group’s status and reading out the sequences that back up your finding.

I was almost inclined to make all of the problems status problems, but for various reasons I did not; in some cases I felt that the problem was too hard for status treatment, and in other cases the context made status treatment inappropriate. Accordingly, there are lots of problems of the familiar Black-to-kill or White-to-live variety. Each problem is followed by the answer on the succeeding page, but you will get more out of this book if you solve the problems on your own.

The problems range widely in difficulty, from the extremely easy to the rather hard. This reflects the fact that the life-and-death situations one meets in actual play range widely in difficulty. I have tried to make the problems as realistic as possible.

When a ko is involved, the situation can become rather complicated because there are different kinds of ko. In Dia. 4 the ko was direct–either side could win it by ignoring just one enemy ko threat–but there are also indirect kos, in which one or both sides have to make extra approach moves. The following are the three main types of indirect ko.

Dia. 5. Approach-move ko (favorable to White)

For White this is a direct ko, but for Black it is an approach-move ko. After taking the ko at a and ignoring a ko threat, Black has to make an approach move at b. Finally, to win the ko fight he will have to ignore a second ko threat.

One can also imagine two-move approach-move kos, three-move approach-move kos, and so on.

Dia. 6. Two-stage ko (favorable to Black)

White 1 starts a two-stage ko. While the ko is being fought at 1 and 2, it is direct for Black (all he has to do is to capture White ), and indirect for White (he has to play a and then b to win it). If White ignores a ko threat, however, the ko will move over and be fought at and a, and in that stage it will be direct for White and indirect for Black.

Dia. 7. Thousand-year ko

A thousand-year ko is marked by the presence of an internal approach move, like a, that could be made by either side. There may also be, as in this case, outside liberties. Here the ko is a one-move approach-move ko for White, who has to make the approach move at a, and a two-move approach-move ko for Black, who has to make approach moves at a and b. What often happens is that neither player makes the approach move at a, each waiting for the other to do so, and in the end Black connects to make a seki. White will have to be sure to maintain an adequate supply of ko threats as the game draws to a close, however.

Taking all this into consideration, one can imagine groups with statuses like the following:

Black can live. White can make a favorable two-stage ko.

or

Black can make an unfavorable one-move approach-move ko. White can kill.

A few of the problems in the later sections of this book will involve indirect kos.

Before we begin, here are some words about ground rules and terminology.

Dia. 8

In Dia. 8 we have a situation where Black is able to live by playing 1, threatening to link up to his three stones on the outside with a. If White prevents that, Black can play b and get two eyes in the corner. This kind of situation is rather common.

Dia. 9

The problem breaks down, however, if the reader maliciously imagines that the three stones on the outside are surrounded as in Dia. 9. There linking up at 3 obviously does Black no good.

To avoid any possible confusion, we shall make the admittedly artificial assumption that the stones shown in the problem are the only stones on the board. In addition, if the problem is shown in the middle of the side of the board, it is to be assumed to be far enough away from the corners that their peculiarities do not affect it, and similarly, if the problem is shown in the center of the board, it is supposed to be well away from all four sides.

Finally, here are three technical terms that will appear in this book. Probably you already know the first two.

Dia. 10

1. Miai. Two points are miai if they represent two independent ways of accomplishing the same thing, so that if deprived of one of them, you can fall back on the other. In Dia. 10 a and b are miai for White’s second eye, so he is alive.

Dia. 11

2. Hane. A hane is a move that bends around an opposing stone without touching any friendly stones. Black in Dia. 11 is an example at the edge of the board. According to a well-known saying, there is death in the hane, but sometimes there is also life or ko in the hane. Because of the hane in Dia. 11, the black group cannot be killed unconditionally. Compare the white group in section 14, problem 5.

Dia. 12

3. Leg. The black group in Dia. 12 has a leg: the stone marked .

Dia. 13

If the supporting stone at the three-five point were white, as in Dia. 13, the leg would be a weak leg, and the group’s status would change from alive to unsettled.

1. Unsettled Three

When a group’s eye shape consists of a line (straight or bent) of unoccupied space, three is the critical length. Anything shorter is dead. Anything longer is alive. Three in a row is unsettled.

Dia. 1

Two spaces: Black is dead.

Dia. 2

Four spaces: Black is alive. If White attacks at a, Black can make two eyes by playing b, or vice versa.

Dia. 3

Three spaces: the unsettled case. If Black plays a, he is alive, but if White plays a, Black is dead. These facts are proven in any beginners' book, such as The Magic of Go by Cho Chikun or Go for Beginners by Iwamoto.

Three in a row is the first of the five basic unsettled shapes. If you do not know what the other four are, you will find them in the pages ahead. Right now we shall use the unsettled three to examine one of the basic techniques for killing enemy groups.

Suppose a group’s eye space is almost filled by some invading stones. ‘Almost’ here means ‘with just one space left open’. Suppose further that the invading stones form an unsettled shape. When the group’s outside liberties are gone, it will be in atari, so the invading stones will have to be captured, but the shape they leave behind will be unsettled, and it will be the opponent’s turn. By playing back into the unsettled shape, he can kill the group.

This process of forcing the enemy to capture an unsettled shape does not have to be carried through to completion to kill the group, as the following example shows.

Dia. 4

When White plays 1, Black is dead, and no further moves are necessary. Black cannot stop White from in theory playing ✕ and almost filling his eye space with an unsettled three.

Dia. 5
2, 4, 6: elsewhere

This shows how Black can be put into atari. He captures the invading stones with 8, but–

Dia. 6

White plays back into the unsettled three and kills him.

Dia. 7

To kill, the unsettled shape must almost fill the enemy’s eye space. Here, for example, White 1 is not a killing move, although it does create a seki. Black has two internal liberties left, and if White ever adds a stone at ✕ to give atari, it will be a live four, not an unsettled three, that Black captures.

[In this Go Books edition, all the status problems have been split into two problems, one with White to play and one with Black to play. This way, you can solve each problem interactively.

If a player should not play at all, choose Pass: on iPhone and iPad, tap and hold on the status indicator in the top right; on the Mac, right-click on the diagram.]

Problem 1

White to play

Black to play

White is alive in seki.

Dia. 1

White cannot capture Black, for if he plays a, he will be dead. Black cannot capture White, for if Black plays a, White will capture four in a row and be alive with territory.

Problem 2

White to play

Black to play

White is dead.

Dia. 2

This looks like the same shape as before, but now if Black plays 1 and a, White will be in atari. Nor does it help White to answer 1 with 2, since his eye space is then almost filled by an unsettled three.

Problem 3

White to play

White to kill.

Creating a cutting point.

Dia. 3a

White 1 starts to break the connection between the two halves of Black’s group. If White later fills liberties at the points marked ✕, the right side of Black’s group will be in atari, and he will have to connect at a. But then he will be dead.

Dia. 3b

If Black plays 1, he is alive in seki.

Problem 4

White to play

Black to play

White is alive.

Dia. 4

If Black plays 1, White answers at 2, and vice versa. Since each half of the white group touches both of the internal liberties, White is alive.

Problem 5

White to play

Black to play

White can live. Black can kill.

Dia. 5a

White lives with 1 and 3, in seki of course.

Dia. 5b

Black 1 kills White. Other moves would kill him, too, but 1 does the job best, leaving White not even any ko threats.

Problem 6

White to play

Black to play

White can kill. Black can live.

Dia. 6a

White’s connection kills Black.

Dia. 6b

This is a mistake. There is no reason for White to let Black have a ko.

Dia. 6c

Black 1 guarantees two eyes after capturing at a.