Go Rules Cheat Sheet: The Whole Game on One Page

Every rule of Go is below, in seven numbered points. Nothing has been left out and nothing here is a simplification: this really is the complete rule set, which is why Go teachers keep insisting the game is easy to learn. If you want the same material explained rather than listed, read the rules of Go instead. If you want it taught on a live board, the interactive tutorial takes about ten minutes.

The rules

  1. Board and turns. Go is played on a grid, usually 9x9, 13x13, or 19x19. Stones go on the intersections, not the squares. Black plays first, then the players alternate, one stone per turn, on any empty point. A stone never moves once placed. You may pass instead of playing.

  2. Liberties. The empty points directly next to a stone, up, down, left and right but not diagonally, are its liberties. Stones of one colour that touch orthogonally form a group and share their liberties.

  3. Capture. A group with no liberties left is removed from the board immediately. Size makes no difference: a twenty-stone group with one liberty dies as fast as a single stone.

  4. No suicide. You may not play a stone that would leave its own group with zero liberties, unless that same move captures an enemy group and frees a liberty in the process.

  5. Ko and superko. You may not play a move that recreates a board position that has already occurred. In practice this means you cannot instantly recapture a single stone that just captured one of yours. Play somewhere else first, then come back.

  6. Passing and the end. When you have no move worth making, pass. Two passes in a row end the game. Both players then agree which stones are dead, and those come off the board.

  7. Scoring. Each player counts their stones on the board plus the empty points they surround. White adds 7.5 komi for going second. Higher total wins, and the half point means there are no draws.

That is all of it. This site plays by exactly these rules, which are the Chinese (area scoring) rules with positional superko.

The three diagrams that explain most of it

Three black stones on a small board labelled with their liberty counts: four in the open centre, three on the edge, two in the corner.432
Liberties: four in the open, three on an edge, two in a corner.
A white stone with black stones on three sides and one liberty remaining at the marked point, one move away from capture.
White has one liberty left. Black plays the marked point and the stone comes off.
The standard ko shape, where black can capture the white stone at the marked point and white is then forbidden from recapturing immediately.
Ko. Black captures at the marked point. White may not take it straight back.

Terms you will hear

  • Atari: a group with one liberty left, one move from capture.
  • Eye: an empty point surrounded by one colour. Two real eyes make a group permanently safe.
  • Ko: the repeating capture shape that rule 5 exists to stop.
  • Seki: a standoff where two groups both live without two eyes, because neither can attack without dying.
  • Dame: a neutral point belonging to neither side. Worth a point here, so fill them before passing.
  • Komi: the 7.5 points White receives for playing second.
  • Sente: having a move your opponent must answer, and so keeping the initiative.

The full glossary has roughly thirty more.

What the rules do not tell you

Knowing all seven rules will not tell you where to put a stone, any more than knowing how a knight moves teaches you chess. The things that actually decide games are which groups will live (life and death), how the final count works out (scoring), and when a game is over (passing and dead stones). All three come from playing rather than reading.

Press Ctrl+P, or Cmd+P on a Mac, and this page prints as a short reference you can keep next to a real board. There is no PDF to download and there does not need to be: this page is the PDF.

Then play a game. Nine by nine against the computer takes a few minutes, and you will have used every rule on this list by the end of it.

Try it on the board →