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Go
One of the oldest board games known, Go originated in China as early as 2000 B.C., according to some sources. The goal is to control territory on the board by placing stones. We have regular Go (GX) played on a 19x19 size board, and the easier 9x9 (G9) and 13x13 (G3) versions. Our rules provide only a brief introduction to help the beginner get started.


  • read: Introduction and Object
  • read: Capturing Stones
  • read: Connected Groups
  • read: Placing Stones
  • read: Life and Death
  • read: Ko
  • read: Dead Stones
  • read: Ending the Game
  • read: House rule: Game ends after a specific number of moves
  • read: Counting Points and Komi
  • read: Handicapping
  • read: Go Web Sites
  • read: Why is the automatic scoring of Go sometimes wrong?
  • read: Why not let players mark dead stones in an attempt to improve the Go scoring results?
  • read: How can I get better at Go?



Introduction and Object Go is a difficult game to learn. These instructions will help you get started, but you will need to look at other sources and watch good players to learn strategy. Links to some other Go web sites are provided at the end of this Go section.

The game is usually played on a 19 x 19 board, but ItsYourTurn.com also provides variations on 9 x 9 and 13 x 13 boards which are easier to play. Players take turns putting stones of their own color on the board. Black moves first. Stones are placed on the points where the lines cross. It is possible to pass your turn and not place a stone, but players rarely pass if they don't intend to end the game. Stones can not be moved around the board once they are placed, but they can be captured. Your captured stones count against you when points are added at the end.

Your object in Go is to control territory on the board by surrounding it with your stones. The player who controls more territory at the end of the game wins.

Your stones themselves on the board do not count as controlled territory. Only the empty spaces that your stones surround count as controlled territory. To control an area, stones of your own color must completely surround it and block all horizontal or vertical lines leading out of it. The edge of the board can help to form a border of controlled territory.

This is a portion of a Go board in the midst of a very simple game. Black has surrounded 11 points next to the edge. These 11 points are controlled by Black. White controls 12 points. Note that the single White stone in the middle of White's territory does not count as a controlled point.


Spaces on the board that are in between both White and Black stones are neutral territory. When the game ends, neutral territory does not count in either player's score.
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Capturing Stones You and your opponent can capture each other's stones and remove them from the board. Each of your captured stones reduces your final score by 1 point.

You capture one of your opponent's single stones by placing one of your stones on each adjacent point vertically and horizontally next to your opponent's stone. Placing stones diagonally next to your opponent's stone will not help to capture it.

In the diagram below, White has surrounded Black's single stone on three sides. If white places a fourth stone where the red dot is, the Black stone is captured and removed from the board.


Each empty point vertically or horizontally adjacent to a stone is called a liberty. We can say that a stone is captured when all of its liberties are filled by the opponent's stones.

Stones that are next to the edge, or in a corner, are not protected from capture. Instead, they can be captured when each of the vertically or horizontally adjacent empty points is occupied by the opposing stones. Here, the Black stone in the corner has only 2 liberties marked with red dots. Black is captured when White fills those liberties.


A Black stone on the edge has 3 liberties and is captured when white fills them.


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Connected Groups If you place two stones so that they are vertically or horizontally adjacent, then they share liberties. The two adjacent stones in the picture below together have 6 liberties, which are shown by the red dots.


To capture these Black stones, White must fill all the liberties. Then, the Black stones are captured.


As you can see, if you have many stones placed in a large group so that each is vertically or horizontally adjacent to another stone in the group, then this group shares many liberties. The group is very hard to capture. Such a group is called a solidly connected group. In the pictures below, Black has a large solidly connected group of stones. White has many liberties to fill to capture all of them.


Though White needed many moves to capture the Black group, the Black group was still not a well defended group. Read on to learn how Black could have defended this group better.
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Placing Stones You can only place a stone on the board where it has liberties, or will immediately capture your opponent's stones.

In the picture below, Black has four stones placed in a diamond shape. White can not place a stone in the middle of them, where the red dot is, because White would have no liberties there.


However, suppose White has already surrounded the Black stones so that the only liberty remaining for those Black stones is the point in the middle. White can now place a stone there, because that will cause the Black stones to be captured, and the White stone will have liberties.


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Life and Death In Go, a group of stones can be alive, or it can be doomed to death.

In this picture the Black stones are alive, because White can not capture them. Even though White has them surrounded, White can not fill either of Black's remaining two liberties, marked with red dots. This is because if White were to place a stone on either of Black's liberties, that White stone would have no liberties, and it would not capture any Black stones. Remember, a player can not place a stone where it has no liberties and does not capture.


The two liberties in the middle of Black's stones are called eyes. They are points controlled by Black that protect the group of Black stones from capture by White. A solidly connected group must have at least two different eyes to be alive.

The next picture shows the same setup, but with a small change. One Black stone has been replaced by the White stone with the red dot. The Black group still appears to have its two eyes, but they are false eyes. The reason is, Black's stones are now separated into different groups that do not share liberties with each other.


It is possible for White to capture all these Black stones in two moves by putting White stones where the red dots are in the next pictures:


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Ko Ko is a special situation in Go. In the pictures below, White performs a capture of one Black stone.


Now, if Black were to place another stone where its stone was just captured, the White stone would be captured. Then White would be able to recapture the Black stone, and this would go on forever.

This situation is called Ko. To prevent players from capturing back and forth like this, there is a special rule of Ko:

Suppose White captures Black in a Ko situation. In the very next turn, Black can not capture the White stone that was just placed on the board. Instead, Black must make a different move. But in turns after that, Black can capture the White stone.
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Dead Stones Dead stones are stones that can never be joined into a group with two eyes. Such stones are sure to be captured in the course of playing. Nevertheless, it is not necessary for each player to capture all of the opponent's dead stones during the game. If stones are understood to be dead, they can be left on the game board. When the game is over, each dead stone remaining on the board reduces its player's score by 1 point.

This picture shows some dead Black stones within a White territory at the end of the game. If the game were to continue, these Black stones would be captured. If Black were to try to defend these stones by adding more Black stones, then he would only be adding more dead stones to the board and reducing his score.


In case you doubt that these Black stones are dead, consider what would happen if Black were to attempt to defend this group by adding more stones. Any stone that Black might add would only weaken his position. Suppose Black were to fill in as many dead stones as he can, like this:


(Remember, Black can not fill in the very last space because a player can not place a stone where it will have no liberties.) Now, White would only need to fill in the remaining space to capture all the Black stones.


Thus, Black would lose all 8 stones as captured stones, instead of just the original 2. As you can see, Black is wise to end the game without attempting to defend those original 2 dead stones.

Notice that White is better off not placing any more stones within its territory to attack Black. Remember, you get points for empty areas of the board that you surround, not for pieces that you place on the board. If White were to add more pieces to the board within its own territory, then White would reduce the amount of territory that it controls, and thus reduce its score. In the situation shown in these pictures, both players can see that no matter what Black does, he can not defend his stones. They are dead. White should not attack them more, and Black should not defend them more.
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Ending the Game A game of Go ends when both players agree that nothing more can be gained by playing. On ItsYourTurn.com, the game ends when one player passes his turn, and the other player passes her very next turn. At this point, a winner will be determined automatically by our scoring program, as described in the next section on Counting Points, and Komi.

It is not possible to write a Go scoring program that is perfect. You might disagree with the scoring that our program gives a game. If our system declares the wrong winner and loser, please pull up the game board and click on 'Email Websupport about this game.' We will take a look at it and switch the winner and loser if necessary.
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House rule: Game ends after a specific number of moves Due to a small minority of players not willing to pass their turn to end the game, we are enforcing a maximum number of moves in each Go game. These maximums are:
  • Go 19x19: 225 moves
  • Go 13x13: 125 moves
  • Go 9x9: 75 moves
Since maximums are significantly higher than the number of spots on each board (remember that two spots are covered on each move), they should never be reached in a normal game. If the maxmimum number of moves is hit, the game will end automatically, and higher scorer will win the game.
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Counting Points and Komi When the game is over, points are counted. Since Black has the first move in the game, that player has an advantage. To make the game more even, some points are subtracted from Black's total before the final score is announced. This adjustment is called komi. Here are the points that are removed from Black's score at the end of the game for the different versions of Go.

  • 19 x 19 version: -5.5 points
  • 13 x 13 version: -4.5 points
  • 9 x 9 version: -3.5 points

After the komi is removed from Black's score, the score for each player is determined in this way:

  1. Dead stones are designated.
  2. The controlled spaces are added up for each player
  3. Total points for each player are computed using this simple formula:

    total points = (number of spaces controlled by that player) - (number of player's stones that were captured) - (number of dead stones)

A final picture of the game board is created showing which spaces on the board were captured by each player, which spaces were neutral, and which stones were dead stones. The score is also included in this game board image. If you disagree with the automatic scoring of the game,
contact us using our online contact form. Tell us your userid and name, your opponent's name, and the color each of you are playing. We will look at the game and make adjustments if necessary.
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Handicapping If two people want to play Go with each other, but one is a better player than the other, then the better player may give the lesser player a handicap. To do this, the better player should use the ‘Invite user to play’ option in the left-side menu column to invite the lesser player to a game. The lesser player will be Black, and the better player as White will have the first move.

To invite a player to a game with a handicap, perform these steps:

  1. Look in the left-side menu column under ‘Play’ and click ‘Invite user to play.’
  2. On the next page, you will see a long list of games. Choose Go or one of the Go variations, then scroll to the bottom. At the bottom you may choose to play a two-game match. Then click ‘Choose game.’
  3. On the next page, type in the name of the player you want to invite to play and click ‘Search for user.’
  4. You might see a page where you select a player from a list. Click a player’s name to highlight it, then click ‘Select this user.’
  5. On the next page, you may type an optional message, then select the time limit per move and the handicap. Click ‘Send message,’ and the invitation will be sent.

A handicap gives the lesser player extra stones at the start of the game. Here are pictures of how the stones are arranged for a handicap of 2 through 9 on the 19 x 19 Go board:



The handicaps for Go 13 x 13 look like this:


The handicaps for Go 9 x 9 look like this:


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Go Web Sites Here are a few web sites have more instructions and strategy for playing Go.

How to Play Go is a fairly concise description of the rules.

The British Go Association has a learners' section where the rules are explained.

The Web Go Page Index gives links to rules and strategy sites, and Go clubs.

The Game of Go has a good explanation of the world ranking system for Go players.
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Why is the automatic scoring of Go sometimes wrong? It is very hard to write a program that scores Go games correctly. We will never have a program that is perfect.

As always, if you encounter incorrect Go scoring that changes the winner of the game, please send us a link to that game (
contact us using our online contact form), and we will take a look at it.
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Why not let players mark dead stones in an attempt to improve the Go scoring results? This has been suggested as a remedy to the imperfect computer scoring of Go. However, there are problems with this because we are a turn-based site.

This would add a day or two because one players has to mark the dead stones, and the other player has to agree. However, if one player refuses to do this, we don't think it's fair to time them out of the game. Also, we do have players who don't know which stones are dead.

If there's a disagreement, the game could bounce back and forth between the players indefinitely. We have players on the site who refuse to agree to a draw in chess even with only two kings on the board, and we have to take these uncooperative players into account. While the computer scoring is imperfect, unfortunately marking dead stones will create more problems than it will solve.

As always, if you encounter incorrect Go scoring that changes the winner of the game, please send us a link to that game (
contact us using our online contact form), and we will take a look at it.
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How can I get better at Go? Playing regularly will improve your Go game. You may also want to buy a book about Go and study it. Browse our selection of popular Go books, available from Amazon.com.
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