Rules

Basic Rules

• Two players, black and white, take turns placing a stone (game piece) on the points (intersections) of a 19 by 19 board (grid). Black moves first.
• Stones must have liberties (empty adjacent points) to remain on the board. Stones connected by lines are called chains, and share their liberties.
• When a stone or a chain of stones is surrounded by opponent stones, so that it has no more liberties, it is captured and removed from the board.
• If a stone has no liberties as soon as it is played, but simultaneously removes the last liberty from one or more of the opponent's chains, the opponent's chains are captured and the played stone is not.
• "Ko rule": A stone cannot be played on a particular point, if doing so would recreate the board position after the same player's previous turn.
• A player may pass instead of placing a stone. When both players pass consecutively, the game ends and is then scored.
• A player's score is the number of empty points enclosed only by their stones plus the number of points occupied by his stones. The player with the higher score wins.

This is the essence of the game of Go. The possibility and threat to capture opposing stones provides strategic variation and makes the game interesting. (Also see strategy.)

Go allows one to play not only even games (games between players of roughly equal strength) but also handicap games (games between players of unequal strength).

Optional Rules

Optional Go rules may set the following:

• compensation points, almost always for the second player
• compensation stones ("handicap") placed on the board before alternate play, allowing players of different strengths to play interesting games