Authors:
Main line: Hashimoto Utaro 9p
Variations: Dieter Verhofstadt 1k, Bill Spight
White has to start with .[1] There are many interesting variations.
If Black tries to save his monkey jump marked stone. White throws in at and creates shortage of liberties at a with
. If Black resolves the shortage of liberties with
, White plays
, making miai of b and c.
We shall gradually investigate the alternatives back to .
Depending on the situation on the upper side, Black can choose not to resolve the shortage of liberties, but instead play here.
captures four stones, and
throws in again at
.
White connects, and gets one eye, and if Black makes the other one false with , White runs away with
.[2] If Black is strong in the environment of
, however, he can kill White, so one has to bear in mind that the status of the white group heavily depends on the upper side conditions.
This is the variation in which Black permits his monkey jump to be cut off by playing ; it results in seki.
is important. The rest of the moves are more or less forced.
and
complete the shape. White has all of her stones in one chain, so in order to capture them, Black has to play either a or b. In both cases a live "bent four" shape results. So Black will play neither of them, giving seki.
in the above diagram is important for the shape created.
If White carelessly plays descent at
, Black kills at
.
(10 recaptures at 8)
here is probably even better for killing White.
If Black answers as here with
, White doesn't make a fool of herself and she lives with
and
. Playing
at
, instead, would enable Black to make seki.
If at
,
at
reverts to Variation 2. If
at
,
at
reverts to Variation 1.
Of course, Black prefers this way of allowing White life.
The points and
are both vital points in this position and if White rushes to take one, Black takes the other.
Here, throwing in as before with
doesn't work any more.
,
, and it's all over.
[1]
This problem already appeared on rec.games.go resulting in an argument on whether seki is life or not. I hope we are not going to have that discussion here. So, White can live in seki, but that is not the main line given in the book.
[2]
There is an unwritten convention in life-and-death problems that to escape is to live.
Problem 14
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