Endgame Tesuji 3

  Difficulty: Intermediate   Keywords: EndGame, Tesuji
[Diagram]

Position

We consider the position as shown in this diagram. The focus is on the upper left corner. Surprised about W1?

[Diagram]

Sacrificing stones to aim for...

The real endgame tesuji for White is to play the hane at W1 and another hane at W3.

[Diagram]

... the white sente descent.

If B4 blocks, then W5 is an atari, which is sente for White.


Comparison

[Diagram]

Black plays first

The hane-connect is a large sente endgame play for Black.[1] The question is, how should White play at the corner if there are also large endgame plays elsewhere?

[Diagram]

Gote

White would be reluctant to play the hane-connect at W1 and W3, because it is a gote move.

[Diagram]

Better

The descent at W1 is an improvement, because it threatens to enter the corner, but this may not be good enough.

[Diagram]

Gote again

The reason is that if there are more urgent plays elsewhere, B2 can tenuki. While W3 and W5 can enter Black's corner, B6 can tenuki one more time. So Black gets sente for two times, and the value of White's moves are no so great anymore.

[Diagram]

Severe

On the other hand, if B4 choose to tenuki, then connection cum atari at W5 is much more severe, compared to having the W5 stone at a. Here W5 threatens to capture three Black stones, and this may also have life and death implications depending on the configuration on the right side since it also destroys Black's eye in the corner.


Author:


[1]

[Diagram]

Maybe gote

W4 elsewhere.

Bill: Since we do not know what the surroundings are, we cannot be sure that the hane-tsugi, B1 - B3, is sente.

The point is that White's play in the corner is quite large, perhaps bigger than Black's threat with B5.


This is a copy of the living page "Endgame Tesuji 3" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2011 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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