Sunday Problem #85

Published 16 Jan 2022 by antti (last edited 15 Feb 2022)

tags: tsumego, sunday-problem

This is an original problem arranged from a shape that appeared in a training game.

Black to play.

Solution

Failure
Black can kill White locally in the corner with 1–6, and then by connecting at ‘a’. Unfortunately for Black, however, his right-side group will then fail a capturing race, and so instead of connecting at ‘a’ Black has to start a direct kō fight instead.

Solution
Black’s brilliant tesuji placement of 1 avoids most trouble in this problem. The best White can then do is to resist with 2–8, creating an extremely long approach kō fight. After 8, Black can even simply connect with ‘b’ and then tenuki four times locally before he needs to start to really fight the kō.