Avoiding the ladder

In go, you'll make plenty of moves that you'll quickly regret. The best way to learn about them is experience, but there are a few major ones that are good to know beforehand. The next few steps will get into these.

The first is a called a ladder. This happens when you become too protective of one particular stone. In your effort to save it, you set off a domino effect and lose many.

In the board section on the left, white has one liberty, which is marked by a star.

In the middle, you can see white's next six moves. Black has forced white left, giving white two more liberties. Black then blocks to the left and white moves up. Black then blocks to the top. This is the ladder set-up. The pattern repeats until white is trapped at the edge of the board with no liberties.

On the right, the white stones have been captured and removed by black. This is a ladder. White loses seven stones by trying to save one, while black gains even more influence on the board.

This brings us to suicide, and how to turn a potentially fatal move into a winning one.

Step 5