False Eye

  Difficulty: Introductory   Keywords: Life & Death, Shape, Go term

Chinese 1: 假眼 (jia3 yan3)
Chinese 2: 卡眼 (qiǎ yǎn) - to falsify eye
Japanese: 欠け眼 (kakeme)
Korean: 옥집 (okjib)

A false eye is something which possibly looks like an eye, but really isn't one.

[Diagram]

One eye is false

The black group has a real eye and a false eye. The false eye is the one at a. Notice that the marked black stones have an incomplete connection with the rest of the group: a suffers from both marked white stones.

Also, if White fills up the exterior liberties at b and c, the two black stones are in atari. If Black connects them at a, the "eye" obviously disappears. Just the same if Black allows their capture.

Thus, a false eye is not an eye.


There are four basic types of false eyes (see also recognizing an eye) :

[Diagram]

Diagonal false-eye

[Diagram]

Bottleneck false-eye

[Diagram]

Side false-eye

[Diagram]

Corner false-eye



False eyes are fundamentally bad shape, and they can be taken advantage of in order to reduce eyespace or cause shortages of liberties.

[Diagram]

False-eyes are detrimental to eyespace

This White group may seem alive at first glance, because it seems to have more eyespace than a straight four group, but it actually has less and is unsettled !

[Diagram]

Kills

B1 kills, next a and b are miai. (B1 at a also kills.)

[Diagram]

Lives

W1 lives.

[Diagram]

Also unsettled


Also, forcing the opponent to create false eyes is a very common technique to reduce the number of liberties of a group. Squeeze tesujis and capturing problems very often involve false-eyes.

[Diagram]

Black to save his corner stones

[Diagram]

Solution

After B3, the marked stones are captured.


See also:


This is a copy of the living page "False Eye" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2016 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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