![]() StartingPoints Aliases (info) Referenced by
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Suicide
Difficulty: Advanced
Keywords: Tactics, Rules
The term suicide (or self-capture) refers to a move which is played such that the stone just placed has no liberties, but all opposing stones still have. Suicide moves are forbidden under Japanese rules and Chinese rules; but some other rulesets, such as Ing rules, New Zealand rules and Tromp-Taylor rules, do allow suicide, at least when it is suicide of more than one stone. A suicide of one stone does not change the position on the board, and therefore may be forbidden or equivalent to passing, depending on the ruleset [1]. Suicide of more than one stone can, however, be a useful move.
The simplest, and best known, situation where suicide can make a difference is as a ko threat. In this position, the black group is alive. However, if White is allowed to play the suicide move of
But sometimes suicide also makes a difference for the outcome of a capturing race. In this diagram, if White is not allowed to play suicide, she is dead. There is no way for White to avoid that: Black first fills up two liberties with
Playing at
Black plays atari at
Note that these diagrams are just used to show that White is indeed dead - Black need not hurry to take the stones off the board.
If suicide is allowed, White does have a resource in this situation. She can play the suicide move of
After [1] The status of self-capture of a single stone in various rulesets which allow suicide is as follows:
A very unusual incident occurred in the first round of the
15th Korean Kiseong tournament (2003-10-02). Cho Hunhyun 9p was forced to lose a game
(against Choi Cheolhan) because of an illegal move. You can see the game record at the time of the infraction at Main author:
This is a copy of the living page "Suicide" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |