Liberty

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  Difficulty: Intermediate   Keywords: Tactics, Go term

Chinese: 气 (qi4)
Japanese: 駄目 (dame), 手 (te)
Korean: 활로 (hwal lo)

A Liberty is in essence any given group's directly adjacent empty spaces.

Often known as 'breathing spaces', rendered in, Chinese, the word 'qi' means simply a 'breath', or 'air'.

A liberty, then, is a group's 'ability to breathe' on the board, or the space needed to surround it fully.


The below needs simplification for redundancy and an edit for better visual simplicity.


As stones that are played are not often solidly connected, and treated as a unit; and the game itself is astatic --( It does not stand still -)--It is constantly based on a player's purposes and intents., and to project, players are always reading sequences.

As such, the Go term "liberty"'s usage can be based on the spaces directly around any physically connectedgroup, as well as more often those plays to remove such spaces--requiredto remove a tactically connected? stone or string of stones, when a group of two or more physically separate groups or stones are treated as a unit for a specifictactical purpose. Or, when one string requires an sequence of moves to secure the removal of physically connected stones' liberties

The use of "liberty" is with regards to one's purpose, or strategic intent. live, in actual play.


When one wants to consider sacrificing a physically connected group within a tactically connected group, or decide how a tactically connected group is as a whole to function, the ability to play and sacrifice any stone comes into question. or chooses to save it, the sequences (and thus liberties ), change based on whether ne is forcing himself to connect phyically at tactical connections when liberties are removed from a cutting point.

This may yield both or less total liberties on the final connected groups.

Whereas with the basic, physical sense, the purpose is to give an actual space to the tactical connections of stones, disregarding potentialforcing moves to connect, or a threat on half of a tacticall connected group.

Thus is very important for both basic capturing races, and advanced0level play, which often takes into account a tactical situation for the sacrificing of stones toachieve a higher purpose such as thickness, or influence, or overconcentration.

For a slightly more advanced concept's example of this, see OutsideForInsideTrade?

  • The first sense of liberty is an empty point adjacent to a single stone or physically connected chain of stones.In a legal position each chain has at least one liberty.This is the basic meaning. Such a liberty is called a dame in Japanese. The liberty - introductory page explains some of themore basic implications in fighting.
  • The second sense of liberty, important for tactics, is a play required to surround a single stone or chain of stones.It is in regards to the action and purpose of removing liberties. This is referred to with 'te' (lit. 'play' or 'move') in Japanese. This takes into account both the number of -basic- physical liberties, and the actualplaying sequence with actual optimal playin mind. Here the number of liberties measures number of playsto remove and surround a group from the board. It is discussed in liberty (tactical sense).

Liberty in Chinese is 气 ("Qi" in pinyin), which literally translates to "breath".[1] The thought is that stones need breathing space and that once the last breathing space is removed, the stones die.[2]


Further reading


[1] This is the same "Qi" as the one considered to be beneficial in terms of Feng Shui.

(Sebastian:) It can also mean "life energy". Incidentally, this is the same character (apart from modern simplfication) as the Japanese "ki" in "Aikido".

UserGoogol?: Interestingly, the English word spirit comes from the Latin word spiritus, which also means breath. Deeper linguistic or metaphysical meaning shall be left as an exercise to the reader.


[2] Bill: Is breath (Chinese) also ambiguous? Or does it only refer to adjacent points?

unkx80: This 气, or breath as you call it, can be as ambiguous as liberty.


Me523: That's funny, and cool. Before I stumbled upon this page, I didn't notice or know the Chinese literally meant 'qi'. My teacher (who is also Chinese-capable) has always told me that your liberties are like your breath, andI've learned to focus on breathing when I'm counting now, in relation. :-)Great, and funny enough I should stumble upon this page. It's one of the most beautiful things and high points in my Go growth and discovery.

I think maybe I can clarify it to the benefit of the page and viewrs?

Above: I wanted to create a clear meaning above, but it is tangled, and not concise. I will come back to edit it later nore, but a clear, very basic summary and overview accurate to the real relation between the two being based on the purpose vs. physicality of usage. I'm still working on it, because I'm tying it both tactical connection and physical liberty.

As this is a page for beginners, or those wanting to understand core concepts in general, I think this gives a clear, concise definition which shows the real purpose of things i.e. a tactical purpose, like saving a triple-kosumi 'group', or letting 1 of the 3 get cut off, as essentially based on what the reader/player deems key stones, and what they use them for otherwise, they were presented with the viewpoint of examples with no real core concepts to tie it together. Isn't there a BeginnersTryToKillStomes? page somewheere around here?

(Perhaps, we can rename it to physical liberties vs. tactical/play liberties and update those instead. But maybe some of the above content be simplified or re-tied into advanced liberties?

Thanks for the reformats. I apologize for the quirky formatting happening there. :-)


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This is a copy of the living page "Liberty" at Sensei's Library.
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