Counting liberties is hard

General Go Discussion
1

Every good player tells me that counting liberties is easy, you just go 1-2-3-4 and see who has more.

Except when you have approach moves or connections to make or prevent or other special cases that may apply. Which are things I find easy to miss as a beginner.

I made a review board with a few situations that are confusing to me - I can understand them if I pause and think about it, but would be likely to get it wrong in a game.

So I guess my question is, how to you manage to recognize and handle all the liberty counting exceptions in a game ???

2 Likes
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https://senseis.xmp.net/?CapturingRaces1

Lots of useful resources on that site, too. Obviously you can only measurably improve by employing deliberate practice.

1 Like
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Thanks smurph for the link. My problem is not with understanding the capture race rules (i.e. from the different types listed in https://senseis.xmp.net/?CapturingRace) but more with the counting itself (https://senseis.xmp.net/?HowToCountLiberties) as well as cases where blindly applying the rules actually ends in failure :confused:

4

Easy solution: don’t get into capturing races, always win outright.

When it comes to actual counting, I just read it like tsumego imagining playing actual stones.

5

early morning
reads forum
“Coding libraries is hard”. - “I find these truths to be self-evident…OH!”