I've been going through the Korean academy go problems (level 1) on gobase and don't understand one of the results. As far as I can tell the answer given as correct either results in death for black or seki. The moves 1-4 are the answers given by the SGF replay. Any help would be appreciated.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc
$$ ---------------------
$$ . . . . 1 . 2 3 . . |
$$ . . . O X X 4 X O . |
$$ . . . O X . O X O . |
$$ . . . O X X X X O . |
$$ , . . O O O O O . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

Yes, that's seki. I don't see a better result.

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Move #1 is the only move for black to live. Black gets zero points from his life (since white can make a seki in gote) but it's a better result than white getting 22 points uncontested for killing those stones - that's why it's the right answer.

Please understand that - are merely to show that White cannot kill Black after . That sequence is a small gote that gains 3 points.

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Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

It is 100 % seki.

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Stefany, web programmer

I guess the misunderstanding is that seki were not the same as life.

Seki is life. The black stones cannot be captured, therefore they are alive. Whether there are some white stones "inside" that are also alive makes no difference.

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

Seki is like the life of a slacker. You're alive but you don't have much of a life.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Thank you for all of the responses. I'm not sure I'm ever going to shake the idea of zombie seki stones though. As long as they don't start roaming the board trying to overtake my living groups.