Coach
A real 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 real 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 real 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 real 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 real 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 real 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. The correct move is to leave it completely alone.
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 real 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 real 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.