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January 2001's Go Answer of the Month

From a Korean magazine.

Dia 1 - Black to play.

With a question like this, the answer is presumably for Black to kill the White stones. Assume initially that sekis and kos are wrong. Of course if we cannot kill outright, then we'll have to go for one of those...

With White having so many outside liberties, this is unlikley to be a semeai / capturing race. Probably the answer will be a nakade / dead big eye.

Dia 2 & 3 - Black failures.

In Dia 2 White lives with territory, in Dia 3 he lives in seki. These are no good then.

Dia 4 - Black succeeds?

At West Surrey Go Club, we thought that this was Black's answer for one meeting. The next week we worked out a refutation.

Dia 5 - White's refutation.

We realised that White trying to kill Black in Dia 4 failed and that he should play for the seki with 2. White lives in seki here.

Dia 6 - Black's solution.

So for Black to succeed, he needs to prevent Dia 5, and force White to play as in Dia 4. He can do this with the throw in of 1 here. Any other White replies fail simply.

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