Beginner Exercise 235 / Solution

black lives  

zinger If black goes first, he obviously lives, so the question is what happens if white starts. If , makes a and b miai, so black lives.

seki?  

So that only leaves . Black lives in seki up to . So it seems black is alive.

ProtoDeuteric: and are also miai. If they were switched, would connect black at the top insead of the bottom.

White kills  

Bill: If White plays first, you cannot assume that White will get one and Black the other, since White kills. ( would also kill.)

But as ProtoDeuteric points out, if Black plays first, if he plays White will play , and vice versa, for sente seki.

White kills  

ProtoDeuteric: Notice that means death for black even if we disregard the "false miai" set up by the previous sequences. at "c" produces at "a", at "b" forces black into a classically dead shape without white needing to respond, and at "d" only serves to physically connect two parts of a dead group, as does a black play at "a". The problems for black with this eye space is that the internal white stones occupy the vital points for the potential shapes of the eye. Perhaps white does not need to respond to any black moves in this situation until white is captured, in which case she would need to play on the bending point of the bent three to kill black.