How to play Go: rules for beginners
Go is a board game for two, more than two and a half thousand years old. The rules are few, and you can learn them in ten minutes. That does not make the game shallow: Go is considered one of the deepest strategy games there is.
The board and the stones
Go is played on a board — a goban — ruled with a grid of lines. The full board is 19×19 lines; for a first game, 9×9 is easier to handle: the game is shorter, and every rule is the same. Stones are placed not in the squares but on the intersections of the lines, including the edges and corners.
One player plays black stones, the other white. Black moves first, and the players then alternate. A move places one stone on any empty intersection. A placed stone is never moved. A player may pass instead of moving.
Liberties and captures
Liberties are the empty intersections next to a stone, horizontally and vertically (not diagonally). A stone in the center of the board has four liberties, one on the edge has three, one in the corner has two.
Stones of one color standing next to each other along the lines form a chain. A chain's liberties are shared. When the opponent takes the chain's last liberty, the whole chain is captured and removed from the board.
A chain with a single liberty left is in atari: it can be captured on the next move. A player escapes atari by adding a stone to the last liberty, so the chain gains more — or sacrifices the stones if they cannot be saved.
Suicide is forbidden
A stone may not be placed where it, or the chain it joins, would be left with no liberties at all. The exception is a move that itself captures the opponent's stones: liberties appear once the capture happens, and such a move is allowed.
Ko: a position never repeats
Sometimes two players could capture a single stone back and forth forever in the same spot. This situation is called ko. To keep the game from looping, repeating a position is forbidden: a move may not recreate an arrangement of stones that has already appeared on the board. This site enforces the strict form of the rule — repeating any earlier position is forbidden (positional superko).
In practice this means you cannot immediately capture the stone back in a ko. You must play elsewhere first — usually a threatening move the opponent benefits from answering — and only then come back.
Living and dead groups
An eye is an empty intersection (or a small empty area) entirely surrounded by stones of one group. The opponent cannot place a stone in a single eye: that would be suicide.
A group with two separate eyes can never be captured: to take its last liberty, the opponent would have to fill both eyes with one move, which is impossible. Such a group is alive. A group that cannot make two eyes, and that the opponent can capture at any time, is dead, even while it still sits on the board.
There is a third outcome too — seki: groups of both colors share common liberties, and whoever fills one of them first loses their group. So neither side plays there, and both groups count as alive.
The end of the game
The game ends when both players pass in a row: that means neither side has a useful move left. The players then mark the dead groups: they are removed from the board, and the points they occupied count as the opponent's territory. If the players disagree about which groups are dead, play continues, and the disagreement is settled on the board. A player may resign at any time.
Scoring
This site uses area scoring (also called Chinese scoring). Each player scores a point:
- for every one of their living stones on the board;
- for every empty intersection of their territory — an area that borders only their stones.
Empty intersections bordering stones of both colors are neutral and score for neither side. White additionally receives komi — 7.5 points for moving second. The half point rules out a tie. Whoever has more points wins.
Glossary
- Atari
- A stone or chain left with a single liberty.
- Goban
- A board for playing Go.
- Eye
- An empty intersection inside a group that the opponent cannot play into.
- Komi
- Points awarded to White to offset moving second; here, 7.5.
- Ko
- A situation where capturing back would recreate an earlier position.
- Seki
- Mutual life: groups of both colors stay alive by sharing liberties.
- Handicap
- Stones a weaker player places in advance so a game with a stronger player is even.
- Tsumego
- A life-and-death problem for a group — the best way to train.
Tips for your first games
- Start on a 9×9 board — a game takes ten to fifteen minutes.
- Corners are worth the most: they are the easiest place to enclose territory. Then the sides, then the center.
- Do not chase every one of the opponent's stones. A strong group of your own is worth more than a few captures.
- Check every move which chains — yours and the opponent's — are low on liberties.
- Review your lost games: the move history shows where a group ended up without two eyes.
How to play online
On the home page you can play both sides on one device — handy for working through a position or showing someone the rules. To play with a friend, press "Play with a friend" and send them the invitation link: you play Black, they play White. No sign-up needed.