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III. A Detailed Explanation of the Rules (continued)
 
3. Suicide

 
Rule 3: A stone may not be played if it will have 0 liberties and will not capture any of the opponent's stones. (In other words, you may not capture your own stones.)
You may not play a stone which would have no liberties. In other words, you may not play a stone which would capture itself. But you can play such a move if it captures one or more enemy stones, because once the enemy stones are removed from the board, your stone will have liberties again. This rule is shown if Figure 7 below. White is not allowed to play a stone on the point marked A, since that stone would have no liberties. White is not allowed to play B or C either, since those moves would create strings of 3 white stones with no liberties. None of these moves capture any black stones, and so White cannot play them. But White is allowed to play stone number 1, even though it creates a string of two white stones with no liberties, because it captures two black stones. Once those black stones are removed, stone number 1 has two liberties, and so it did not capture itself.

Figure 7: Suicide
In Figure 8 below, White may not play on the point marked with an X since that stone would have no liberties, and it would not capture the black stones (they still have one other liberty left). But White can play stone number 1, which puts the black stones into atari. The black stones are now surrounded, but they are not captured yet, because they still have one liberty (the point marked X). Now Black can't play a stone at X, because that would give the black stones 0 liberties. So Black must play stone number 2 somewhere else on the board. Now White is allowed to play stone number 3 in the middle of the black stones, since that reduces them to 0 liberties, and captures them. Once the black stones are taken away, stone number 3 has plenty of liberties. A single empty point like X, which is completely surrounded by a string of stones, is called an eye of that string. Because of the suicide rule, you can't play inside an eye like this unless it is the last liberty of that string of stones, and playing there will capture them.

Figure 8: An Eye

 

 

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