Go

Official rules & mechanics

Two players alternate placing black and white stones on the intersections of a grid. Black plays first. Once placed, stones do not move; they remain until captured or until the game ends. Spite Games supports the familiar 9×9, 13×13, and 19×19 boards. Smaller boards reach conflict quickly and are excellent for learning, while the full board gives long-term plans more room.

Liberties and connected groups

A liberty is an empty intersection directly above, below, left, or right of a stone. Diagonals do not count. Stones of one color touching orthogonally form a group and share all of that group’s liberties. When the final liberty of an opposing stone or group is filled, those stones are captured and removed. A move that leaves your new group with no liberties is normally illegal, unless that move simultaneously captures an opposing group and thereby creates liberties.

Ko, passing, and scoring

The ko rule prevents an immediate recapture that would recreate the previous board position. The player who cannot recapture must play elsewhere first, creating the possibility of a “ko threat” important enough to demand an answer. This rule prevents a pair of players from repeating the same capture forever. A player may pass instead of placing a stone. Two consecutive passes end the game, after which dead groups are identified and the position is scored.

This version uses Chinese-style area scoring: your score combines the empty points surrounded by your living stones with the stones you have on the board. White receives komi, a small fixed addition that compensates for Black’s first move. The higher total wins. A living group usually has, or can reliably make, two separate internal eyes. Because an opponent cannot fill both eyes without making an illegal self-capture, such a group cannot be removed by ordinary surrounding play.

Strategy guide

The most useful beginner proverb is corners first, sides second, center last. A corner already has two board edges working as walls, so it takes fewer stones to enclose points or build life there. A side has one wall; the center has none. This does not mean the center is worthless. Central influence becomes powerful when it supports attacks or links several developing groups, but trying to fence the center too early is inefficient.

Build strong shapes, not a solid wall everywhere

Keep friendly stones close enough to cooperate without placing every stone directly beside another. Overconcentration spends several turns accomplishing what fewer stones could do. Loose extensions can claim space while retaining routes to connect. Watch for cutting points where an opponent could divide your stones into two weak groups. A connected heavy group with few liberties can become a target that must keep running while the opponent profits elsewhere.

Learn to read a short capture race. Count liberties for each adjacent group, then consider whether either player has a forcing atari—a move that leaves one liberty. Do not play every available atari automatically. Sometimes it pushes the opponent toward safety or strengthens stones you hoped to attack. The better attack often builds your own territory while making the other group uncomfortable.

A calm opening plan

1. Take or approach open corners rather than answering every distant move.
2. Extend along a side from a corner position that has support.
3. Identify your weakest group before starting a fight.
4. When the board changes, compare the value of defending locally with taking a large point elsewhere.
5. Near the end, play boundaries that are sente—moves the opponent is strongly motivated to answer—before quiet one-point gains.

Review a completed game by marking where groups became weak and where a move was too small for the stage of play. Beginners often lose more through repeatedly rescuing inefficient stones than through a single tactical mistake. Sometimes sacrificing a few stones preserves initiative and leaves the rest of the board healthier.

History & origins

Go originated in ancient China and has been played for well over two thousand years. Its Chinese name, weiqi, refers to the surrounding game. The rules traveled through East Asia and developed deep scholarly and competitive traditions, particularly in China, Korea, and Japan. Although equipment is spare—a grid and stones—the number of possible positions gives the game an extraordinary range of expression.

Professional institutions and teaching lineages helped preserve famous games, opening patterns, and problems. Japanese terminology such as joseki, sente, gote, and ko became common in much English-language Go writing, while modern international play also draws heavily on Chinese and Korean schools. Board sizes other than 19×19 have long been useful for teaching and quick play, because the same ideas of life, connection, cutting, and efficient territory appear in a more concentrated form.

Go also became a landmark challenge for computing. The game’s huge search space and the difficulty of evaluating influence resisted older brute-force approaches that worked well for chess. Modern machine-learning systems eventually reached elite strength and introduced moves that changed professional expectations. Human play did not become obsolete; instead, players gained a new source of analysis. The enduring contest is still between competing judgments about value: take secure points now, or invest in possibilities that may shape the board later.