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Go is played on a rectangular board
with lots of intersections on it. The intersections are
important because this is where you place your stones - and
not on the squares as most would intuitively do. The typical
board sizes are 9x9 (for beginners), 13x13 (for advanced
beginners) and 19x19 (for even more advanced players). You
play with a bunch of black and white stones - one player has white
and the other has black. Black plays first, except in
handicap games (handicaps are explained
here).
You can place your stones on any empty intersection - with some
exceptions, but more about that later.
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An empty 9x9 board is shown in Fig 1.
Extensions:
More about board sizes here.
The goal of the game is to surround things. You can surround empty areas, which is then called your territory, or you can surround opponent's stones, which are then called your prisoners. Each empty intersection within your territory is counted as 1 point at the end of the game. Each prisoner you have is also counted as 1 point. The winner is the player with more points.
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As a quick example, lets look at Fig 2. Black managed to surround the areas in upper left corner and in lower right corner (points marked 'b'). White in turn, managed to surround the area in upper right corner (points marked 'w'). So, as a result, Black has surrounded 14 points, while White has surrounded only 12 points.
Please notice that the arrea in lower left corner does not count as White's points yet because it is not fully surrounded - the is a "hole in the wall" at 'x'. Once White plays at 'x', he will be able to count the points in this area as his.
Remember:
You must fully surround areas before you can
count the points as yours! This means - no holes in the walls.
Also notice that the area in the center of the board is still a "no-man's land" - it is up to the players to determine how the center is divided by further play.
Extensions:
More about this rule here.
A player can place his stone on any empty intersection of the board except when it results in a death of his own stones. This is called a "no-suicide" rule. It basically means that you cannot make moves which take the last freedom or liberty of your own stones (liberty is explained here). The only exception to this rule is when you not only take the last of your own liberties but also the last one of your opponent's liberties, thus killing your opponent's stones in the process.
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On Fig 3 we can see some examples of what are valid and what are invalid moves in Go.
First of all - let us examine the valid moves, marked as 'a'. These are just examples of valid moves which can be made in this position. As a matter of fact, all the empty points on the above board can be played at except for the points marked 'b'.
The points marked 'b' are not allowed to play at! The reason is that it would place your stones in a "suicide" position - and this is against the rules of Go.
Notice the point marked 'x', however. It might look like a "suicide" at the first glance, but it is allowed to play there. It is not really "suicide"! The reason is that even though by playing there White would take the last of his liberties, he would also take away the last liberty of the two marked Black stones - thus killing them in process.
Extensions:
This might sound confusing, so some examples are given here.
The very special situation which can arise in Go is the position called ko. It is closely related to the previous chapter on valid and invalid moves, as well as to the idea of killing stones. Let us examine the Position 1 in Fig 4.
| Position 1 | Position 2 | Position 3 |
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White can, in the next move, kill the black marked stone by playing at 'a'. But the a situation arises as in Position 2, and now black can kill the white marked stone by playing at 'b' - which leads to Position 3, which is an exact copy of Position 1. And so the circle is closed, and it could go on over and over - till the players are bored to death. Obviously - there is a need for a special rule to deal with this kind of situation. And here it goes - the ko rule: A player cannot re-take the ko immediately after his opponent took it - an additional move must be done first. Some more general interpretation of this is that No Go position can repeat twice! (this is called a superko rule) but this may lead into some very complicated and confusing considerations, so we just keep it simple for now. Just remember - you cannot re-take the ko immediately - you have to make another move first. The trick is to make such a move, called a ko threat, which your opponent has to answer, so you can then come back to the ko and take it!
Extensions:
A more detailed explanation of the ko rule can be found here.
Some more examples of special situations arising in a Go game can be found here.
The game is over when both players consecutively pass. You can pass if you do not see any more useful moves on the board - i.e. when you do not think that you can enlarge your score (the number of points you accumulated including both the areas you surrounded and the stones you killed). After both players pass, the game is done and the scoring begins. An example of a position at the end of a game is given in Fig.5. As you can see, all the areas are well-defined and "fenced off" by either player. The sole unacclaimed point remaining on the board is the very lower-left corner point marked 'a'. Such point is called dame and is not counted towards the scores of neither player.
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White killed: 1 stones Black killed: 0 stones |
Scoring is the process by which the points accumulated by each player are counted and the final result of the game is determined.
The first thing you do is to remove the dead stones from the board - if there are any. There has to be an agreement which stones are dead and which are not - and if this cannot be satisfactory determined, a good idea is to talk it out, or ask a stronger player for help (or, in face-to-face games, you may even backtrack to before you both passed and actually play it out).
Some pointers about when stones are alive and when they are dead can be found here.
In the example position if Fig 5 the white stone marked with a triangle is considered dead - its fully enclosed inside black area and does not have other stones around it to support it and no way to escape. This stone will be taken from the board and counted as a point for Black.
The next thing you do, is to fill the prisoners you have (which are the enemy stones you killed during the game) into the opponents areas (i.e. the territory he accumulated during the game) - this effectively subtracts the points you he lost through your captures from the points he accumulated through surrounding territory. The left-over empty areas (if any) of your opponent's territory are to be counted and they produce your opponent's points. If he does the same to your points in the meantime - you both know how many points each of you has.
These points are then compared against each other and whoever has more, is the ultimate winner of the game.
The scoring process demonstrated on the example of position in Fig 5 can be found here.
An example game - the whole game leading to the position in Fig 5 - can be found here.
Extensions:
I wrote a whole supplement devoted to ending the game. It explains when and how to pass, when to resign and more.
You can find the starting point here. I also wrote some more about different rules
and scoring methods, which can be found here. It is strongly recommended that you read the
material since ending the game and scoring are some of the hardest and most confusing issues a beginner might face.