Go Rules

Go is a board game, saying that, it is played on a board.

One of the first things you would notice is that you play on the intersections and not the squares as depicted in the image to the right.

The smaller black spot is only considered a marker, for quick reference where you are playing, the game would play the same whether it was there or not.

In this game black goes first, followed by white. This order is repeated, however a move that you may do is pass. If there is two consecutive passes in a row, it is a silent way of agreeing the game is over and you are ready to count the score

Go To Scoring

Image of go board with one black and one white piece

Image of board from www.gobase.org

Image of Liberty's

While playing go a large, if not the entire game is capturing other pieces. To achieve this you must completely surround the opponent’s piece. Each piece's "open space" is called a "Liberty". When these liberties are reduced to zero, the piece is considered captured. (View Animation of This Rule, Rule One).

If two of the same players piece are touching (One of your pieces are on top of your first piece’s liberty) then they are considered sharing Liberties. To capture a piece that is sharing liberties you must completely surround, or get rid of all the liberty's they both have (View Animation of This Rule, Rule Two)

Now, how do you keep a group alive? What keeps it from being taken and the game continously go on? Well there is a term called an "eye" that describes a shape that your pieces are in. To take a group with one eye you must completely surround the group and then you can play inside the eye. (Image of a group with a single "eye" to the right)

However, a group with two eyes cannot be captured. In order to take a group like this you would have to be able to move in both of the eyes at the same time. Which can’t be done.(View Animation of These Rules)

Image from www.gobase.org

When playing you may encounter a problem, there may be a position as the image to the left portrays, that you could infinitely take each other’s pieces. To stop this there is a rule that you may never allow the board to look the same way twice in a row. This way if you take apiece he can’t take it back the very next turn and the process continues endlessly.

Scoring

The Objective of this game is to gain a higher score then your opponent. To do this you must conquer the largest amount of territory. The territory that you own is everything within your walls. An example of this you can see in the image to the right.

All of the black squares (which would not appear in an actual game) are what is in black territory, while all of the white ones are considered whites territory.
If you count the points, the score is | Black - 16 White - 11 | in this game it appears that black has won. However since black has gone first this would give a large advantage to black, to make up for this fact white has been given a 5.5 (Note, the current AGA standard for a 19x19 board is 6.5) point addition to his score making the score 16.5 to 15. White has won by a small amount.

Image of territory

The actual stones do not count to add as your score.

image from www.pandanet.co.jp