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This cropped up in a teaching game (on a 9*9 board) at the club recently. At the end of the game, the black stone was deemed dead and white gets 17 points. Is that the right result or can black perhaps force a seki? The 3-4 point looks to be a white weakness!
I must start this answer with the comment that it is late, due to holidays, and incomplete, as I haven't spent the time analysing the problem in anything like enough detail. I hope that you avid readers will email me all the many corrections required.
The original title of this section was "The 3-4 point achieves nowt." Tim Hunt pointed out a that 5' at 1 in Dia 3a seems to come to seki.
Dia 2: in response to the 3-4 point, falsifying the 4-5 point eye, White can play 2, a sort of net allowing complete encirclement of Black if he tries to escape it.
Other Black 3's enable part of the white outer wall to be placed in atari quickly. As far as I can tell, White has a good response in every case. For example:
But it doesn't work for him.
Played like this it becomes a seki - much better for Black than white corner territory.
This is about as far as I have gone with the problem. I have found many other sekis and many kos which I have managed to refute. There may possibly be a ko enabling black to capture the white wall - but I haven't found it yet.
To be continued?
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Last updated 2004-08-10
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