Capturing Race Exercise 5 / Solution

[Diagram]

Which group is dead ?

The liberty count gives:

  • Black: 10 outside liberties and 3 shared liberties
  • White: 12 - 4 = 8 big eye liberties and 3 shared liberties.

Considering that in a capturing race between one eye and none, the player with the eye gets the shared liberties, the final tally is Black 10 to White 11.

Black loses in all cases.

Icepick: *boggle* Lo and behold, The Second Book of Go pays off! Reading those capturing race chapters have paid off.


Moonprince: Confused newby here. Will some please set up a diagram and explain why black loses? Can't black kill the inside white and make eyes?

[Diagram]

Capturing race. (B9 at black+circle)

[Diagram]

Capturing race. (B7 at B3, B9 at B5)

[Diagram]

Capturing race. (B3 at black+circle)

[Diagram]

Clearer now?

If B1, White takes the entire outside group instead of the two stones.

Gronk: While this explicit method is good to see once concretely (as shown), it is an awfully hard way to evaluate capturing races. The risk of misreading is very high. I strongly recommend RichardHunter's book CountingLibertiesAndWinningCapturingRaces for a thorough treatment of how to count liberties in cases like this (and others).


This is a copy of the living page "Capturing Race Exercise 5 / Solution" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2011 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]
StartingPoints
ReferenceSection
About