Following the general pattern of its predecessor Tesuji, this book organizes over two hundred life-and-death problems and examples into thirty-six short chapters. Noteworthy features include:

-The "status" approach, which takes the reader through the same analysis that he should perform in actual play.

-The grouping of the problems around common tesujis - throw-in, placement, etc. - and standard shapes - the one-, two, and three-space notchers on the sides, the corner L groups, etc.

-A logical, step-by-step development, which makes Life and Death first an excellent text to learn from, then an invaluable reference work to come back to.

007 Introduction

013 1. Unsettled Three

018 2. Six Die, Eight Live

022 3. Four- and Five-Space Eyes

026 4. Rabbity Six

030 5. One-Space Notchers

034 6. Shortage of Liberties

038 7. Two-Space Notchers

042 8. An Eye in the Interior

046 9. Three-Space Notchers

050 10. False Eyes and Placement Techniques

054 11. The Door Group is Dead

058 12. Incomplete Shapes

063 13. Review Problems

066 14. To Make One Eye

071 15. Half Eyes

073 16. Bent Four in the Corner

078 17. The One-Two Points, Etc

082 18. Placement: Attack and Defense

086 19. Throw-Ins

090 20. The L Group

094 21. The First L+1 Group

098 22. The Second L+1 Group

102 23. The L+2 Group

106 24. The Tripod Group

110 25. The J Groups

114 26. Hane for Ko

118 27. The Long L Group

122 28. Seki in the Corner

126 29. The Carpenter's Square

130 30. The Weak Carpenter's Square

134 31. More Corner Positions

138 32. Live or Link Up

142 33. Threat to Capture

146 34. Under the Stones

150 35. The Difference a Liberty Makes

154 36. Building Eye Shape

When I started to play the game of go in the United States, books of life-and-death problems were not available, so I studied the subject on my own by attempting systematically to analyze some of the shapes that kept appearing on the board. This was a time-consuming project. In some cases it took years to reach the right answer. In a few cases, equal time was spent in reaching the wrong answer. Right or wrong, the answers went into the first edition of this book, which, by emphasizing the status of standard groups, has apparently helped many players to win games. The second edition takes the same approach as the first edition and largely contains the same material, but corrects the mistakes that have been pointed out over the years.

A number of people have contributed to this book in various ways. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of the following:

1) Stuart Dowsey, who, before he left Japan, put together a collection of life-and-death problems into which I dipped two or three times;

2) James Kerwin, who took time to read the final draft of the first edition and was responsible for a number of corrections and improvements;

3) my wife Toshiko, who cut and pasted into the manuscript all of the eight hundred twenty-two diagrams;

4) Mark Boon, Richard Hunter, Pierre Colmez, and others who pointed out various errors that remained in the first edition.

James Davies, Yokohama, August 1996, preface