Shut in

  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: Strategy, Theory

Chinese: 封 (fēng)
Japanese: 封鎖する (fusa suru)
Korean:

To shut in or to seal in or to fence in or to hem in or to enclose or to surround? or to blockade a group of stones: these are flavours of a core aspect of Go, the surrounding game. Mostly, shut in, seal in, fence in and enclose refer to a group which is half surrounded by the opponent, half facing corner or side, moreover in a severe way, whereas surrounded is more general.

A general opening principle is not to allow for your stones to be shut in: avoid being sealed in.

Example 1.

[Diagram]

Black is enclosed

B2, B4 tenuki (see Joseki-related life-and-death example 4 for the continuation).

Example 2.

[Diagram]

Black seals White in

This example comes from a [ext] game between Nakamura Doseki (White), and Hayashi Monnyu.

W1 allows B2 to seal White's group into the top left corner.

[Diagram]

Direct ko

W1 is a tesuji that allows White to make a direct ko for life.


Bill: I still think this page needs revision, but I have replaced the example with one based on Zinger's suggestion and one from pro play.


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