Atari in Go — One Liberty from Capture | PlayGo.gg

An atari is a stone or group of stones with only one liberty left. One more move fills the last liberty and the stones are captured and removed from the board.

What is atari?

A stone or group of stones is in atari when it has exactly one liberty left. A liberty is any straight line coming off of a stone or group of stones. If you only have one liberty left and it is your opponent's turn, they can play on that liberty to capture and remove some of your stones from the board!

The word comes from Japanese ataru (当たる), "to hit" or "to be on target". Korean players say 단수 (dansu) and Chinese players say 打吃 (dǎchī). Unlike chess "check," there is no obligation to announce or respond to atari — a player can ignore it, and sometimes should, if responding elsewhere is worth more than the threatened stones.

When to use atari?

As a beginner, you should play atari as much as you can, unless you are putting yourself in atari to do so! As you improve at the game, there will be times where placing your opponent in atari actually hurts your winning chances. Our recommendation is to atari as much as you can until you reach 25k or 500 ELO. Then you can start to learn more about when and when not to atari. If you are curious, we've included some basic guidelines for when to atari below:

- Does it lead to capture? If putting your opponent in atari simply allows them to run away or connect back to another group, it may not help you to atari. - Does it threaten something larger? In some cases, you can force your opponent to link up with other stones so you can capture more of them at once! - Are you putting yourself in danger? Beginners especially like to attack and try to capture. But if you aren't careful, it can backfire and allow your opponent to capture instead!

Example of atari in a game

This is taken from a real game played between beginners on our website. Where can black play to put white in atari?

Atari is one of the most fundamental beginner concepts to Go. Please take the time to understand it before moving on to another term!