Making seki

An AI review of a game showed that the outcome could be reversed by invading two corner territories and making seki in each of them. How feasible is this for human players? Are any professionals well known for doing this?

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Humans (either professional or not) also create sekis. Happens regularly.

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Interesting. ( HowOftenDoSekisOccur at Sensei's Library suggests that sekis occur about one game in 50.)

Are there any guidelines for making seki?

Yes, generally speaking a seki inside an existing corner territory occurs when you can get forcing moves against the corner group by threatening to kill it or cut it, and the corner group has too few outside liberties to capture the invading stones once they’re inside.

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Liberties. Or rather, the lack of liberties.

Sekis are often born from late-game invasions when some big group have lost its outside liberties, which then prevents the opponent of putting the invading stones in atari

Of course, there are many other types of sekis that can emerge at any point of the game, but most sekis happen quite late from invasions. One reason is that seki isn’t normally considered as a “good result”, but more like “the only remaining result that still works”

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Well, if I make a seki and consequently win a lost game, then I consider the seki as a good result :grinning_face:

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If you can force your opponent to live in seki in gote (i.e. you keep sente), then you can do that quite early in middlegame. But if you have to lose sente, then this can generally wait late endgame.

Example: Black to play. Which move is bigger? Make a seki with A or capture a stone with B?

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Yeah, true… But ideally, you would rather live with solid territory (or at least two eyes) instead living in a seki. Or if you’re the one invading, you would rather kill the opponent, instead turning the whole thing into seki ^^

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Not exactly an answer to your question, but highly recommended is to work through ‘The rules of capturing races’ a couple of times on Tsumego Hero—perhaps confusing to begin with but well worth the time. Sure, it’s about capturing races but seki is a frequent feature. Once you’ve absorbed those principals, you’ll often know pretty quickly from the outset whether or not seki is possible.

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