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All serious Go players practice life & death problems. The question is: should we study textbooks or real games. I personally prefer the latter as real games often contain additional factors that influence our decisions on local life & death situations.

Under the Stones (倒脱靴 in Chinese; 石の下 or ishi-no-shita in Japanese) refers to situations in which brilliant moves become possible in space left by your stones just captured. These shapes are mostly seen in (artificially designed) tesuji problems. But in practice it does occur from time to time, even in professional games.

Let's first examine two typical patterns in which Under the Stones tesuji may appear:

Square Four pattern

Diagram 33.1: White to play

This is yet another 'incomplete' Carpenter's Square.