Black to play

black-to-lay

A problem from the British Go Journal issue 158. I don't play Go any more, but I still like it. This problem is particularly pleasant. It is symmetrical, so there are only 6 possibilities. Black to play and live.

SGF visualised with GoRilla.

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f then b or b' for the first eye?

I'll have an E please, Bob.

By Vinny Burgoo (not verified) on 28 Jan 2012 #permalink

Think symmetry.

[Yes. Unless it is a problem designed to break that rule. But this isn't :-) -W]

By David B. Benson (not verified) on 28 Jan 2012 #permalink

Long time no play. Hmm. I think I've got it.

Black F, it's the crucial place to form two eyes. White E would threaten to connect at A, but can be countered with D. The freedom above D is crucial to black's survival.

Playing E would have white press down at A and A', which need to be countered by B and B', respectively; then A takes F and Black dies.

[Yes. And in a certain meta-way, its obvious: no other play is sufficiently counter-intuitive to be an interesting answer. I realised it eventually when I found, in all the other sequences, that white kept playing at "f" -W]

OT - other fun.

With AMSR down, what is now your favourite map/graph?

[Ah, is that it? I'd noticed that IJIS wasn't updated, but hadn't been paying attention to why. I'll need to think about that -W]

There is quite a collection at
http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/

or

http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm

http://gfspl.rootnode.net/klimat/arcticice.png

is probably most similar to IJIS/JAXA one.

There is a pool for the maximum at
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/01/2012-maximum-area-pool.html

with my brief, but probably useless, pointers.

Hey I got that straight away, and I haven't played in 20 years (and wasn't any good then). If *white* plays f, then black can't make two eyes. What do I win?

AMSR2 is due for launch in a few days, but aneone got any ideas how long before information becomes available? Dr Spencer said they wanted a year of overlap between AMSR-E and AMSR2 so I am doubting calibration phase will be quick.

FWIW
News of end of AMSR-E was in update to
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/10/amsr-e-ends-9-years-of-global-obser…

The graph page does say "Sea-ice data update stops for a while due to the suspension of AMSR-E observation." and graph even had an AMSR-E heading.

[Interesting. Hopefully something obvious will be in place before the Spring for the bets. Either that, or the answer becomes obvious -W]