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BensonSAlgorithm

 

Unconditional Life
  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: Life & Death, Go term

Jan: I found I needed the following definition to understand Benson's Algorithm.

A group of stones is said to be unconditionally alive if it can never be captured, even with the opponent playing against the group as many times as he wants.

Examples:

[Diagram]
Diag.: An unconditionally alive group

No matter what White tries against this group, it can not be captured.


[Diagram]
Diag.: This group is not unconditionally alive

This group, although it is normally considered alive, can be captured by White - by playing at 'a', 'b', 'c' and 'd' for example.



jvt: Benson's terminology is confusing: unconditionally alive usually means alive without ko in Go literature.



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