Beginner Exercise 203 / Solution

Black lives  

secures one eye and lives. Black has another eye at the top and can play at least a point on the third line to connect.

Continuation  

achieves nothing. After , a and b are miai to safeguard the top eye.

Failure 1  

defends a side but not the other. After there is no way for Black to make a second eye. at fails in similar fashion.

Failure 2  

Another symmetry point fails to ! falsifying the second eye.

Failure 3  

does not work either: after the exchange of and , the throw-in at dashes black's hopes for a second eye.

Note that in all cases White reaches the vital point, in the Solution diagram, to kill.