Eye by Exhaustion

    Keywords: Life & Death, Go term

Eye by exhaustion is a term coined by Tamsin that describes an eye-making technique. Here, an eye is formed because the required throw-in move required to falsify this eye turned out to be a suicide move.

Table of contents

Eye by exhaustion

[Diagram]

Starting position

This example is a sample problem from the Korean Problem Academy (on Gobase). Black to live.

[Diagram]

White's stones are too "exhausted" to move

After W1 and W3, Black makes two eyes and lives because the existence of the WC stones make both a and b suicide moves, which is illegal in some rulesets. In Tamsin's terms, the White stones are too "exhausted" to go one step further.

[Diagram]

Even if self-capture is legal... (5 at 4, 7 at 6)

Even if self-capture is legal, such as when using Ing's rules, Black still lives. Because when W4 makes a self-capture, it is Black's turn and Black can now play B5 at W4. Similarly, W6 is answered at B7.



Why other methods fail

[Diagram]

Failure

B1 is a mistake. After W2, the chain containing W2 has two liberties, and the atari at a and b are miai. Black is dead.



Issue of ko-threats

[Diagram]

Ko-threats

Although there is no difference in the status of the groups with "eyes by exhaustion" when different rulesets are applied, there is a difference where ko-threats are concerned. Here, White has a (loss-making) ko-threat at a if self-capture is allowed, but White has none otherwise.



See also


This is a copy of the living page "Eye by Exhaustion" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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