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Basic Rules Of Go
  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: Rules

There are, unfortunately, several rulesets used in Go. They differ in some of the details but the general rules are the same.

The rules given here are not meant to be strictly correct or complete but are meant to cover the bare essentials to support a basic understanding of life and death.

1 - Rule of free placement


[Diagram]
Diag.: An empty go board of 19 by 19

The go board starts empty and the players take turns in placing their stones on an empty intersection of the board (like any of the circled points). Once placed, the stones are not moved.
Most rulesets allow for passing.


2 - Rule of capture


[Diagram]
Diag.: Liberties and capture

If a stone or a group of stones have no more liberties left, they are captured (removed from the board).
Liberties are open adjacent intersections. Black 1 has 4 liberties. White 2 has 3 liberties. Black 3 has 2 liberties. White 4 has 1 liberty.


3 - Rule of connection


[Diagram]
Diag.: Groups of stones

Stones of the same colour that are connected along straight lines form one group and they share their liberties.
They can only be captured together. The black group has 9 liberties. The white group has 1 liberty.


4 - Rule of repetition


[Diagram]
Diag.: Rule of repetition

It is not allowed to recapture a single stone which just captured a single stone.
In the diagram, after Black captures the marked white stone with 1 and removes it from the board, White is not allowed to immediately recapture 1 by playing at the marked point. Should Black not connect at the marked stone with his next move, White is allowed to capture 1, upon which Black is not allowed to immediately recapture.


Remarks on and implications of these 3 rules:


[Diagram]
Diag.: Capturing groups
  • With respect to rule 2: After a stone has been placed on the board, the status of the opponents' stones is evaluated before the status of the played stone. This means that after white plays at the circled intersection, it is the black group which has no more liberties, and the black group is therefore removed from the board. After this removal, it is clear that the white stone has several liberties, and thus it stays.
    However, if white were to play at 'a', black still has one liberty left (at 'b'), and it is the white stone at 'a' which has no liberties which is removed. (Or the other way around). Note that some rulesets do not allow this sort of suicide play.

The right hand black group is said to have 'two eyes' and is unconditionally 'alive'.


[Diagram]
Diag.: Repetition
  • With respect to rule 4: If black plays at 1 capturing a white stone at 'a', white cannot re-capture at 'a' straight away, since this would lead to an infinite series of recaptures. This situation is called a ko. Various rulesets have more elaborate ko rules.
    Note that when black plays at 3, white can immediatly recapture one stone by playing one space to the left of 3.


The end of the game is hard to define explicitly. In general, it can be said that When both players agree that there are no more moves left which will benefit them, the game can be finished. Take a look at an example game if you want to see how that works in practice. Once the game is finished, the result can be found through counting. The winner is he (or she) who controls the largest part of the board. Again, there are, unfortunately, more than one way to count, although the differences rarely matter in real games. Look at Scoring for more information.

-- MortenPahle (10k)

Note: I am aware that the above is grossly simplified and not a 'rigorous' way of presenting the rules. Feel free to edit the page, but please keep the page simple and general, so that it can fulfill its purpose, i.e. to enable a beginner to understand basic life and death. Rules discussion is better done at Rules Of Go.

See also [ext] http://unkx80.netfirms.com/weiqi/howtoplaygo/ -- unkx80



This is a copy of the living page "Basic Rules Of Go" at Sensei's Library.
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