liberty

A liberty (also called a “breath”) is an empty board point directly adjacent to a stone or connected group. Adjacency is horizontal or vertical only; diagonal contact does not create a liberty. Connected stones share the liberties next to the entire group. When every liberty of a group is occupied, the group has no liberties and is removed from the board.

Liberties determine whether stones are alive, in atari, or captured, and they are central to capturing races and tactical reading. A move that leaves a group with one liberty places it in atari. A liberty belongs to a stone or group and can be occupied to capture it. By contrast, a neutral point, or dame, is empty but is not a liberty of either player’s group.

Internal empty points may be shared or may form eyes, so counting empty points without considering group connections can be misleading.