Gote

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    Keywords: Go term

Chinese: 后手 (hou4 shou3)
Japanese: 後手 (gote)
Korean: 후수 / 後手 (husu)

Losing the initiative. Pronounced "go-teh". Borrowed from Japanese, lit. "following move". From the standpoint of one player, describes any of:

  • a move which loses the initiative, since it need not be answered by the opponent, thus giving him sente
  • the state of having lost the initiative, by playing a move or sequence which need not be answered; "ending in gote"
  • a position where a play will lose the initiative
[Diagram]

gote endgame play

As a position this endgame example is gote for Black; as moves, the B1-B3 sequence are gote; and as a state Black ends in gote.


Although gote has negative connotations, and non-gote moves are to be preferred to gote moves, playing a gote move is not necessarily a mistake. Informally, a gote move could be the best move if its value is more than twice that of any available sente sequence. This kind of calculation is typical of yose (endgame) play.


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This is a copy of the living page "Gote" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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