How a Go Game Ends: Passing, Dead Stones, and Resigning

A game of Go ends when both players pass on consecutive turns. There is no checkmate, no stalemate, and no move limit. Once neither side can find a move that gains anything, they pass in turn, the board is finished, dead stones are agreed and removed, and the points are counted. A game can also end early if one player resigns.

That is the whole procedure. The parts that catch beginners out are knowing when passing is safe, and knowing which stones count as dead.

When to pass

Pass when every move left on the board would gain you nothing. By that stage the boundaries between the two sides are closed, every group that will live is alive, and another stone would only move a point from one of your columns to another.

Under the area scoring this site uses, filling a point inside your own territory is exactly neutral. Your stone count goes up by one and your surrounded-territory count goes down by one, so the total is unchanged.

A settled boundary with black on the left and white on the right, where black has played a pointless stone at the marked point inside its own territory, costing nothing under area scoring but a point under territory scoring.
The marked stone gains Black nothing under area scoring, and costs Black a point under Japanese territory scoring.

Under Japanese territory scoring, where only empty surrounded points count, the same move costs you a point outright. That difference is the practical reason the two systems feel different to play, and it is covered in Chinese vs Japanese rules.

The habit to build is not passing too early. If you are unsure whether a boundary is finished, play it out rather than passing. A pass you regret cannot be taken back, and the cost of an unnecessary stone under area scoring is zero.

Dame: the neutral points nobody owns

Dame are empty points that touch both players’ stones and therefore belong to neither. They are the last gaps on the boundary between two finished positions.

A finished 9x9 board with black holding the lower area and white the upper area, and one neutral point left at the marked spot where the two walls step past each other.
Everything is settled except the marked point, which touches both sides. That is a dame.

Under area scoring, dame are worth playing. A stone on a dame point is still a stone, so it adds a point to whoever puts it there. That single point decides this board: Black controls 44 points and White 36, and White’s 7.5 komi makes it 44 to 43.5, a half-point win for Black. If White fills the dame instead, White has 37 plus komi, 44.5, and wins by the same half point.

The same finished 9x9 board with the last neutral point now filled by a black stone, giving black one more point and the game by half a point.
Black fills it. 45 to 43.5, and the game is over.

So the order is: settle every boundary, fill every dame, then pass. Under Japanese rules dame are worth nothing and players sometimes leave them, which is one more reason the two rule sets can produce scores a point apart. How scoring works goes through a full count.

Agreeing which stones are dead

A dead stone is one that cannot avoid capture if play continued, even though nobody has bothered to capture it. Dead stones are taken off the board before counting, and the points they sat on go to whoever surrounded them.

A white group sealed into the corner with only a two point eye space at the marked points, which cannot become two eyes, so the group is dead.
White is sealed in with two points of space. Filling either one leaves a single eye, so the group can never live. It is dead, and it comes off the board without anyone playing.

Most dead groups are obvious: a stone or two stranded inside enemy territory with nowhere to go. The awkward cases are groups whose eye space is just big enough to argue about. Life and death covers how to tell, and the short version is that a group needs two real eyes, or enough room to make them.

If you are not certain a group of yours is alive, keep playing rather than pass. Make the second eye for real. It costs nothing under area scoring, and it removes the argument entirely.

If the two of you disagree

Under Chinese rules, a disagreement about dead stones is settled by playing it out. The game resumes from the position on the board, the player who claims the group is dead tries to kill it, and whatever happens on the board is the answer. Nobody has to reason about hypotheticals.

Japanese rules handle it differently, with a separate analysis performed off to the side, and that difference is a large part of why the Japanese rule text is so much longer than the Chinese one.

Resigning

You can resign at any point. It ends the game immediately and your opponent wins, with no score recorded beyond the result.

Resigning when you are clearly beaten is normal and polite, not rude, and it is what strong players do. A game where one side is fifty points behind with no weak group to attack has nothing left in it. The rough guide: if you cannot name a plan that would close the gap, resign.

Resigning the moment you lose a group is the opposite mistake, especially on a 19x19 board where one dead corner is a small fraction of the whole. Count first. Losing twenty points hurts, and it is not the same thing as losing the game.

How the winner is decided

After the two passes and the dead-stone removal, each player’s score is their stones on the board plus the empty points they surround, and White adds 7.5 komi. Higher total wins. Because of that half point, there are no draws. How scoring works walks through a complete count on a real board.

How it works on this site

The Pass button sits next to the board. Press it when you are out of useful moves, and if your opponent passes straight after, the game moves to the Counting screen.

On that screen the board shows its own estimate of which stones are dead and what each side has. Tap any group to toggle it between dead and alive if the estimate looks wrong, then press Confirm score. If you would rather keep playing (say, a boundary was not as finished as you thought), press Keep playing and the game resumes from the same position, which is the same remedy Chinese rules give you over the board.

Resign is on the same panel, and works at any point in the game.

If none of this is familiar yet, the interactive tutorial walks through a whole game including the ending, or start a game on 9x9 and pass when you run out of moves. You will pass too early in your first few games and lose a point or two to it, which is the normal way to learn where the end actually is.

Frequently asked questions

Can you pass in Go?

Yes. Passing is a legal move at any point in the game, not just at the end, and you can pass as many times as you like. It costs nothing under area scoring, though passing while there are still points to be taken hands those points to your opponent.

What happens if both players pass?

Two passes in a row end the game. The players then agree which stones are dead, remove them, count each side’s stones plus surrounded empty points, add 7.5 komi to White, and the higher total wins. On this site that all happens on the Counting screen after the second pass.

Is it rude to resign in Go?

No, the opposite. Resigning a lost game is standard courtesy at every level, including professional play, where most games end in resignation rather than a count. What is considered impolite is disappearing without resigning, or playing on with no hope in order to make your opponent prove it.

Try it on the board →