Coach
A case · you decide
Vitalis and the vital point
Vitalis — a student whose big corner groups keep dying
A large black group holds the corner with a single wide eye-space. It looks safe — but White is about to play inside it, and a group with only one eye, however big, can be filled and killed.
Only TWO separate eyes make a group unconditionally alive: neither can be filled, so it lives forever. One eye — even an enormous one — is one eye, and White can fill it.
The whole group's fate comes down to a single point: the one that DIVIDES the eye-space into two.
White threatens the eye-space. What is Black's move?
Two eyes is the one unconditional promise on the board: find the point that makes them, and the group is yours to keep.
A case · you decide
Rampart connects the dragon
Rampart — a student whose groups keep getting attacked one at a time
Two black groups sit a short jump apart with a cutting point between them. Apart, each has only a few liberties; White is lining up to cut.
Separated stones can be chased one group at a time. Connected, they share ALL their liberties and become one dragon — far harder to attack and rarely killable.
White is about to cut between Black's two groups. What now?
A dragon isn't a bigger group — it's two groups that can never be separated.
A case · you decide
Foresight reads the ladder
Foresight — a student who starts ladders on instinct and watches them escape
A white stone is in atari. The obvious move starts a ladder that would chase it in a staircase all the way across the board.
A ladder keeps the runner in atari at every step — but it only works if nothing it reaches lets it escape. A single friendly white stone in its path (a "ladder breaker") turns the chase into a disaster for the chaser.
Before starting the ladder, what should Foresight do?
The ladder rewards the player who saw the edge before taking the first step.
A case · you decide
Weir throws the net
Weir — a student who chases every capturable stone with a ladder
A white stone could be captured — but the ladder that would catch it runs straight into a white ladder-breaker. The chase will fail.
When a ladder won't work, a NET (geta) often will: instead of chasing, you play the one point that covers every escape diagonally, and the stone is trapped where it stands.
The ladder fails on the breaker. How does Weir capture the stone?
Sometimes you don't run a stone down — you close the door and let it trap itself.
A case · you decide
Rebound's sacrifice
Rebound — a student who never spots the sacrifice that captures more
A white group is nearly surrounded, but Black is one liberty short of capturing it — the race looks lost.
A snapback offers ONE stone into the key point. White must capture it — but that very capture fills White's own last liberty, so Black plays right back and takes the entire group.
Black is one liberty short. What is the move?
The snapback is a trap baited with one stone: the capture they can't refuse is the one that loses them the group.
A case · you decide
Standoff holds the seki
Standoff — a student who tries to capture everything and dies doing it
A black group and a white group share the last liberties in a corner. Whoever plays first inside puts THEIR OWN group into atari.
This is seki — mutual life. Both groups live precisely because neither can capture without dying first.
It is a clear seki. What should Standoff do about it?
Seki is the rare shape where restraint is the move — touch it, and it's your group that dies.
A case · you decide
Impetus keeps sente
Impetus — a student who answers every threat and never gets to play their own plan
It is the middlegame. White pokes at a black group with a small threat — but that group is already alive.
A move is SENTE if the opponent must answer it, GOTE if they don't. Answering a threat you don't actually face hands the opponent a free move and the initiative. The real question is: does this poke threaten anything?
White pokes at a group that is already alive. What does Impetus do?
Initiative is a resource: the player who answers only real threats is the one who gets to play the game they wanted.
A case · you decide
Repose plays elsewhere
Repose — a student who keeps adding stones to areas that are already settled
Black has just secured a corner. Adding one more solid stone there feels natural — meanwhile the whole top side is a huge open framework.
Adding to a settled group gains almost nothing — those stones are already alive, so the extra move is worth a point or two. Tenuki — leaving it to play the biggest open area — is where whole games are decided.
The corner is settled. Where should Repose play?
Knowing when an area is FINISHED is what frees you to play where the game is actually being decided.
A case · you decide
Vitalis and Standoff: alive without two eyes
Vitalis & Standoff — a player who always wants two eyes, and a friend who recognises seki
Vitalis's group has no second eye. It shares two liberties with an enemy group that has none either.
If Vitalis plays on one of the shared liberties, the group is in atari and the enemy captures it.
If the enemy plays there, the same thing happens to the enemy.
What should Vitalis do with this group?
Two eyes is one way to live. Standoff showed Vitalis the other.
A case · you decide
Impetus and Repose: forcing move first, then the big point
Impetus & Repose — a player who likes threats, and a friend who likes leaving finished areas for the biggest point
Impetus has a move that threatens to capture stones, which the opponent must answer. Repose wants to take the big open point on the other side.
If the opponent answers the threat, the turn comes straight back.
There is also a small local move that the opponent could ignore.
What order should they play?
Impetus keeps the turn. Repose spends it where it counts.