 Dia. 1. Correct |
Dia. 1. Correct Increasing the sacrifice to two stones by descending to 1 is the tesuji. Next — |
 Dia. 2 |
Dia. 2. Continuation 1 Black.ataries with 3, then descends to 5. White 6 cannot be omitted. Otherwise Black would be able to make eyes for his group. Next — |
 Dia. 3 |
Dia. 3. Continuation 2 Black now goes after the white stones below. He first plays a hane with 7, then ataries with 9. White has no choice but to atari with 10. After 11, Black's group is alive. White can't avoid the loss of his two stones in the corner. (If White 10 at 11, Black 'a'.) |
 Dia. 4 |
Dia. 4. Continuation 3 If White captures a stone with 12, Black captures two stones with 13. . |
 Dia. 5 |
Dia. 5. Black makes eye shape. Instead of 6 in Dia. 2,White might prefer to defend his stones at the bottom with 6 here. In that case, Black would descend to 7 and his group is alive. If White 8, Black 9; if White 8 at 9, Black 8. Either way, Black can make two eyes. |
 Dia. 6 |
Dia. 6. Ko Instead of 5 in Dia. 2, throwing in a stone with 5 leads to a ko, as the moves to Black 11 show. |
 Dia. 7 |
Dia. 7. No aji to exploit If Black neglects to increase the sacrifice to two stones with 1 in Dia. 1 and immediately ataries with 1 as in this diagram, White will capture with 2. As before, Black descends to 3, but he no longer has any aji in the corner to exploit, so White can play 4 and Black is dead. |
 Dia. 8 |
Dia. 8. Black is dead. Instead of 3 in Dia. 7, Black 3 here seems to have more potential for making eye shape, but White plays two devastating placements and Black's group is dead. |
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Sacrificing stones often leads to sequences that are hard to read out, especially after some stones are captured and the opponent makes a recapture. This can transform the entire nature of a position. When such positions arise in games, a player can't analyze them by moving the stones around on the board. Instead, he must analyze the position in his head. And this is how one should solve life-and-death problems: visualize the position in your head and solve them there.
A few years ago I wrote an essay on this topic, Increasing Your Concentration and Powers of Analysis through Visualization. Perhaps some of my readers will find this essay useful. |