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Go, an addictive game Copyright © 1994-2017 GoBase
All rules on one page

A summary of all the rules, useful as reference or to print.


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The Go Board
Legal Moves
/studying/rules/.img/inturn.gif A Go move is played on the intersections of the lines. This is different from what you are used to from other games like chess and checkers. In the figure we show you the first four moves of an instruction game. The moves are numbered to indicate the order in which they were played. That's right, in Go the black player moves first! Another legal move, hard to display in a figure, is pass. When both players pass the game is finished.
Capturing Stones
Dia 1-1: Black plays 1
Dia 1-2: and takes one stone
Dia 1-3: Capturing one stone...
During a Go game one or more stones can be captured by completely surrounding them, i.e. filling all empty points around them. We show two examples: on the left a one stone capture, on the right a three stone capture. Once black has played 1 he removes the captured white stones from the board leading to the 2nd diagram positions. /studying/rules/.img/capture3.gif
Dia 2-1: Black plays 1
Dia 2-2: and takes three stones!
Dia 2-3: Capturing three stones...

Note 1: Needless to say that being captured usually is bad. There are numerous situations though where one would sacrifice one or more stones just to gain an advantage elsewhere.

Aim of the Game
/studying/rules/.img/endgame.gif The purpose of Go is to conquer a larger part of the board than your opponent. The conquered part exists of the stones placed on the board plus the stones which could be added safely, i.e. inside your own walls. The figure shows a final position. The score for this game would be: black has 11 stones on the board and could add 16 stones inside his own walls, white has 11 stones on the board and could add 11 stones inside his own walls, so the score is 11+16 - 11+11 = 5 points for black. Black won this game.



The Ko Rule
Dia 1: Black to move in this position...
Dia 3: It would lead to this position...
Dia 6: Endless...



One of the (many) nice features of Go is that you don't need an opponent of equal strength/experience to have an exciting game. The Go game allows you to equalize the players' chances to win by adding some initial stones on the board. The larger the strength difference the more stones you would add. /studying/rules/.img/handicap3.gif
/studying/rules/.img/handicap9.gif These stones are called handicap stones. The handicap stones are usually placed on predestined points, indicated on the Go board by a thick spot.
We show two examples: a handicap 3 and a handicap 9 game. The latter is usually considered the maximum for 19x19 Go and (as you can see from the figure) is far more than reasonable for 7x7.

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