Hanezeki
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Introduction
Both sides have a string in atari, but for either side, capturing starts a capturing race that the other side can win. Best play is to leave this, therefore it's seki.
This example was probably constructed by Kaise, and that led to the mistaken claim that he had discovered them.
Who is Kaise, who claimed he discovered Hanezeki, and is it worth mentioning? Maybe we should delete this. --Hyperpapeterie
Why is hanezeki a seki
Neither player can win the capturing race by playing first. The explanation on why this is so follows.
Black has no better move than to play to reduce White's liberties. But
and
clearly wins the capturing race by three liberties to two.
Suppose captures, then
makes a placement.
Note that both players have a big eye each. By capturing the three Black stones, White has made his own eye small. See big eye - small eye for more.
makes an approach move, forcing
to capture three White stones. However, when
makes the necessary placement,
wins the capturing race by two liberties to one.
Now suppose plays elsewhere. To prove that Black still can win this capturing race,
can play inside White's eye. Later,
captures, forcing the placement at
, and
again wins the capturing race by one move.
To conclude, the player who starts the capturing race first loses it instead. Therefore, the hanezeki is effectively a seki.
The Most Difficult Problem Ever has a beautiful example from the Igo Hatsuyoron of a (maybe temporary) Hanezeki, involving the sacrifice of 20 stones to make even more stones live!
Terminology
The locus classicus of the term hanezeki is Volume 3 of Hayashi Genbi's Gokyo Seimyo (folio 9, verso). He gives one example.
That alone makes the attribution to Kaise Takaaki (though I'm not at all sure that Ikeda says that anyway) wrong by a century, but in fact the earliest known case of hanezeki is the problem called Zheng Li (Wrestling) in the Xuanxuan Qijing (Gateway to All Marvels), so that puts the date back to 1347 straightaway!
Hanezeki is also sometimes wrongly called itazeki from confusion with the first character.
Note: elsewhere, hanezeki may be referred to by the terms, haneseki, or hane seki.
Also known as hanazeki or hana seki. (For the latter see the GokyoSeimyo, vol. 3, p. 18. The former is a common elision, where s becomes z.)