| Position 1 | Position 2 | Position 3 |
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This is an example game I have witnessed on the Yahoo! Go game server. I do not recall who were the players and what were their ranks. This is by no means a perfect game - there are many mistakes done by both players. But it has a clarity of flow which I found educational, and the final result showed both sides evenly matched. This is why I decided to use this game as an example on this page.
I will not go into too much detail explaining this game, going over every move made on the board. I will try to point out the major stages of a game, and what is the essence of each of these stages. This should give the reader a first glimpse at what a game of Go is all about and about the purpose of fighting.
The opening of the game of go is the phase in which both sides try to define their spheres of influence by first occupying the corners, then making corner approach/enclosure moves or alternatively extending along the sides.
Do not worry if you do not understand all the moves in this game - with time and experience you will! Just look at it now as an example of what kinds of things might happen on a Go board. Understanding will come in time.
| Position 1 | Position 2 | Position 3 |
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A simple opening of a game of Go on a 9x9 board is given in Fig 1. In Position 1 Black starts with occupying an empty corner with '1' and White responds in kind by playing in another corner with '2'. This is very typical for Go games - they usually start by players puting their claims to corners. The reasons for this can be found here.
In Position 2 we can see more of the same - Black occupies another corner with '3' and White takes the last one with '4'. Notice that while the moves '1', '2', and '4' occupied the corners by playing at the 3-3 point, Black '3' is on the 3-4 point. Both these points are valid ways of playing in the corner, and it is hard to say which is better. It certainly depends on the rest of the board and on the plans of the players. You can find more about standard corner moves together with some discussion of them here.
Position 3 represents the next step in game development - the extension along the side with Black '5'. Such extenstions are the logical follow-up to occupying the corners - you can see them in almost every game, no matter what the size of the board: 9x9, 13x13, or 19x19. More about extensions can be found here. Another valid extension which Black could have played instead of '5' would be at 'a'.
Now, one of White's options would be to play an extension of his own, for example at 'b', but he decided to open the hostilities with the attachment at '6' instead. This move marks the end of the opening phase of the game (called fuseki) and the beginning of the middle game (called chuban). The rule of the thumb is that the opening is the phase in which areas are stacked out and the middle fighting starts when the first hostilities are initiated.
The middle game is the part of the game in which the major fights are carried out, in which the opposing forces of Black and White clash against each other. Often this is the last phase of the game, when major upset and loss forces one of the players to resign without waiting for formal scoring.
| Position 4 | Position 5 |
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This particular middle game features two major skirmishes, starting with the fight around lower right corner initiated with White '6' in Position 3 of Fig 1. This fight is shown in Position 4 of Fig 2 - each side ends up with some teritorry (White along the botom and Black along the right) and each side captures one of the opponent's stones (Black captures the white stone at '2' and White captures the black stone marked with a triangle.)
Next Black plays at '11' to attack the solitary white stone and to prevent White from playing at '11' himself and thus laying claim to the whole left side of the board.
White's response to the black attack is shown in Position 5 of Fig 2 - and this constitutes the second skirmish of this game. White plays at '1' and '3' in this position to enclose the corner and strengthen his weak stone. Black blocks at '2' to prevent White from jumping into Black's part of the upper side, and then he blocks at '4' to prevent White from linking up to his stones on the bottom. Cutting of enemy stones and preventing their connections is one of the fundamental strategies of Go - you can read more about this here.
Next White plays at '5' to ensure that his stones have proper two eyes and thus are unconditionally alive (more about life-and-death of stones can be found here). This move is necessary because were Black allowed to play there, all White stones in upper left corner would die.
With the situation in lower right decided and the White group in upper left settled, the middle game is over - the board is divided into distinct areas and what is still left to do is to finish off the edges of these areas to make them into teritorries. This process is initiated by Black '6' - and this is also the move which marks the transition from middle game to the end game (called yose).
The endgame is the part of the game in which the edges of prospective teritorries which were fought out during middle game are finished off. Contrary to many people's belief the endgame is probably the phase in which most games are won or lost. There is an amazing number of points which can be gained by playing a good endgame... and there is an amazing number of points to lose by playing sloppily.
| Position 6 | Position 7 |
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In Positions 6 and 7 of Fig 3 we can see a typical endgame - both sides finish off the edges of their areas by either passively defending (like white '3' in Position 6) or by actively attacking (like black '4' in Position 6). The exact sequence of such attack/defense moves can be crucial to the outcome of the game (and, by the way - please do not think that the sequence of endgame moves I gave in this example is anywhere close to optimal, or even good - its just an example.)
Some very important concepts of the endgame are the ideas of sente and gote, which are explained here. These concepts, together with a good skill in counting which move gains how many points form the basis of endgame play.
After all the edges are finished off, the game is over - both players pass since there is no place for them to play anymore (for some discussion of that see here) except inside their own areas (which is either meaningless or harmful, depending which scoring method is used - see here) or on neutral points like 'a', which are called dame - which is also usually meaningless.
What is left to do is to score the game to see which player has won.
The scoring of the final position of the above game can be found here.