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How to read diagrams
Difficulty: Introductory
IntroductionThis page aims to introduce to people the notation used in Go diagrams. The reader is assumed to have read and understood the introductory rules of Go. Example gameHere, we shall use an example game to show how to read a diagram.
We shall begin with a 5x5 empty board. Recall that we start a game with an empty board, unless there are handicaps.
Black plays the first move at
After the first move, this is the situation on the board now.
Then White makes the second move at
After the second move, this is the situation on the board now.
Black decides to make the third move at
White decides to make the fourth move at
And the game continues... Summarizing the moves in a single diagramHowever, showing one move per diagram is very cumbersome. So, we summarize the process by indicating multiple moves in a single diagram.
This diagram summarizes the sequence of moves shown earlier. The way we read this diagram is to start with an empty board, then Black plays at
Showing a sequence of moves from a given positionIt is often convenient to show a series of moves from a given position, where some moves have already been played.
Suppose we have a position as shown here.
From the given position, Black makes a move at Note that to save space, often only this diagram is shown, but not the previous diagram. But it should be easy to infer the starting position from this diagram: simply remove all the numbered moves.
Showing only a portion of the board
It is also common to show only a portion of the board to save space, as illustrated in this example. However, from the diagram alone, we do not know what the remainder of the board looks like.
Marked stones
It is also common to mark one or more stones with a square, circle or triangle, to facilitate discussions. However, the marked stone is not part of any sequence of moves.
Playing on the same point as a captured stone
Say in the game, White played at
... and then
(
We can summarize the three moves in one diagram by putting "
( Marked stones come in very handy when we want to play a move at a point that was occupied by an unnumbered stone, like in this diagram.
As a principle, removing all numbered stones should give the initial position! Labelling a ko as follows is therefore wrong:
There was a stone at
(
Authors: unkx80. This is a copy of the living page "How to read diagrams" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |