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Don't take away your own liberties
  Difficulty: Introductory   Keywords: Tactics

A common mistake in Go, is taking away your own liberties.

Example 1

[Diagram]

White has taken territory and Black some influence. It is tempting to reduce White's territory by pushing at a.


[Diagram]

However, Black has reduced his own liberties from six to five. As his formation is still open to invasion, reduction or attack, losing a liberty is too high a cost compared to White's cost of one point.

Furthermore, this move loses a ko-threat, but that was not the issue here.



Example 2

[Diagram]
Before

White's stone has four liberties.


[Diagram]
After

A vain attempt to cut the bamboo joint: White's stones now have three liberties.



Almost as bad as losing a liberty, is playing but not gaining any liberties.

[Diagram]
White disregards liberties

The exchange W1 - B2 leaves White with three liberties: the same number as she had before. This is one of the ideas behind hane at the head.


[Diagram]
White gains liberties

After W1 here, whatever Black does, she will end up with at least four liberties for her group.


A more complex situation where removing one's own liberties gives a bad result: Removing one's own liberties Example 1

This proverb or heuristic also is at the base of the proverb telling you to fill outside liberties first in a capturing race.


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This is a copy of the living page "Don't take away your own liberties" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.