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Liberties

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Referenced by
GoTerms
BasicRulesOfGo
BambooJoint
AlmostFill
Dame
DoubleKo
TheFarmersHat
BambooJointIsBadS...
ApproachKo
Eye

 

Liberty
  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: Go term

The liberties of a stone or a group of stones are the empty intersections next to it.

When a stone or a group of stones loses its last liberty, it is said to be captured and is removed from the board.

[Diagram]
Diag.: Liberties

As you can see in this diagram,

  • a stone which is not on the first line has at most four liberties
  • a stone on the first line which is not in the corner has a most three liberties
  • a stone in the corner has at most two liberties

[Diagram]
Diag.: W Liberties

The group of three white stones has three liberties.



Comments:

  • Liberty in Chinese is "Qi" (PinYin?), which means "breath". The thought is that stones need breathingspace and that once the last breathingspace is removed, the stones die.
  • This is the same "Qi" as the one considered to be beneficial in terms of Feng Shui.

BillSpight: Liberty has two different, but related meanings in English. The first is given above, an empty point adjacent to a stone or chain of stones. The second is a play required to capture a stone or chain of stones. Sometimes it takes more plays to capture a stone or chain of stones than its number of adjacent empty points. Nakade Liberties is used in the second sense.

unkx80: Sometimes the term approach move is used to denote liberty used in the second sense. You may refer to Semeai and Eyes Win Semeais for more information.


See Also


Authors:



This is a copy of the living page "Liberty" at Sensei's Library.
(C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.