The Rules of Go, Explained Simply

Go is one of the oldest board games still played today, and it has a reputation for being complicated. It isn’t. The full rule set fits on an index card, far shorter than chess. What takes time is learning to see the board the way experienced players do, and that only comes from playing. This page covers the rules; how to play Go covers the thinking that goes with them, move by move. Prefer to learn by doing rather than reading? The interactive tutorial covers this same material on a real board, one move at a time.

If you want something to keep beside you while you play, the Go rules cheat sheet is a printable one-page summary of everything below.

The rules in one paragraph

Two players take turns placing stones on the points where the lines of a grid cross, black first, and a stone never moves once it is placed. Stones of one colour that touch along the lines form a group, and a group is captured and taken off the board when the opponent fills the last empty point next to it. You may not play a stone that would leave itself with no empty point beside it, unless that same move captures something first. You may not play a move that recreates a board position that has already occurred, which is what stops two stones capturing each other forever. Either player may pass instead of playing, and when both players pass in a row the game is over. Your score is everything you control, your stones on the board plus the empty points your stones surround, with White getting 7.5 extra points for having to move second.

That is the whole game. The rest of this page is the same rules again, slowly, with pictures.

The board and the stones

Go is played on a grid of lines. Stones sit on the points where lines cross, not inside the squares. That trips up a lot of beginners coming from chess or checkers. One player has black stones, the other has white. Black moves first.

The board comes in three common sizes: 9x9 for a quick game, 13x13 for a medium one, and 19x19 for the full traditional game. The rules are identical on all three. See which board size to start with if you’re not sure.

An empty 9x9 Go board with one black stone near the bottom-left and one white stone near the top-right, showing the grid of intersections where stones are placed.
Stones go on the intersections, not the squares.

The goal is simple to state: surround more empty territory than your opponent, counting both the empty points you’ve enclosed and the stones on the board (this site uses area scoring, and how scoring works explains it in full).

Turns alternate, one stone per turn, on any empty point you like. There’s no forced move and no piece that has to advance. A stone never moves once placed; it stays until it’s captured or the game ends. If you don’t see a useful move, you can pass instead of playing, and the game keeps going until something ends it, which the last section on this page covers.

Liberties: the air a stone needs

Every stone needs empty space to survive. The empty points directly next to a stone (up, down, left, right, but not diagonal) are called its liberties. A stone in the open middle of the board has four liberties. A stone against the edge has three. A stone in a corner has two.

A single black stone in the middle of a small board with its four surrounding empty points marked, showing the four liberties a stone in open space has.
The marked points are this stone's liberties.

Stones of the same color that touch each other (again, only up/down/left/right, not diagonally) form a group, and the group shares its liberties. Two separate stones out in the open have four liberties each, eight between them. Push them together into one connected group and they share six liberties total: fewer than eight, because the point between them is no longer empty, but the whole group now has to be surrounded on all six remaining sides before either stone is captured. That trade-off is why connected stones are harder to kill than scattered ones, and why so much of Go strategy is about deciding when to connect and when to stay spread out.

Capture: how stones come off the board

When a stone or group has no liberties left (every neighboring point is filled by the opponent), it’s captured and removed from the board immediately.

A white stone at the center with black stones on three of its four sides and only one liberty remaining, about to be captured.
One liberty left. One more black stone and it's captured.
The same position after black plays the fourth surrounding point: the white stone has been removed from the board, leaving an empty point surrounded by black.
Black fills the last liberty. The white stone is removed.

Capture applies to whole groups at once, not just single stones. A three-stone wall with one shared liberty left goes down in one move, same as a lone stone. The size of the group doesn’t protect it, only the number of liberties does. Liberties and capture goes deeper, with capturing races, snapback and the counting you need in a close fight.

Suicide and the exception

You can’t place a stone on a point that would leave it with zero liberties. That’s called suicide, and it’s illegal on this site and under almost every rule set in use. There is one exception, and it’s the one that makes the rest of the game work: if the stone you place captures an opponent group first, the captured stones come off immediately and the freed points become liberties, so the move is legal.

Four separate white stones arranged in a diamond around a single marked empty point, with black stones filling every other point around them. That marked point is the only liberty each white stone has left.
Each white stone's only liberty is the marked point in the middle. A black stone played there would have nothing to breathe.
The result: all four white stones have been removed and the new black stone in the center now has four liberties where they used to be.
Capture happens first. The four white stones come off and black's new stone has four liberties.

The order matters: opponent stones with no liberties are removed first, then your own stone is checked. If it still has nothing, the move was illegal and you take it back. That exception is also what makes the next rule necessary.

Ko: why you can’t just recapture forever

Sometimes a single stone captures a single stone right back, over and over, in a loop that never ends. Go blocks this with the ko rule: you can’t make a move that would recreate the exact board position that existed before your opponent’s last move. If you’re caught in a ko, you have to play somewhere else first, then you’re free to retake it.

A white stone boxed in by black on three sides with one liberty left at the marked point, the classic ko shape.
White has one liberty left, at the marked point.
Black has played the marked liberty, capturing the white stone and leaving an empty point where white is temporarily forbidden from recapturing.
Black captures. White can't retake at the marked point yet: that would repeat the position from before black's move.

Ko fights show up constantly in real games and can decide who wins, but you don’t need to master them to enjoy playing. Just remember the rule: no immediate repeats. Since you’re blocked from retaking right away, players often play a ko threat elsewhere first (a move so dangerous the opponent has to answer it) before coming back to fight for the ko. If the opponent ignores the threat and retakes the ko instead, you carry out the threat and come out ahead either way. The ko rule explained walks a full ko fight through move by move.

Positional superko

The simple version of the rule, “you may not immediately recapture”, handles the everyday case. It does not handle a handful of rare shapes where a longer cycle repeats. This site uses positional superko instead: no whole-board position may ever be repeated, however many moves ago it occurred, and regardless of whose turn it is.

One rule, no special cases, and every game is guaranteed to end. It is also what the board can check for you, by keeping a record of every position that has occurred and refusing a move that would recreate one. Japanese rules take the other route, keeping a simple ko rule and adding a separate provision that declares certain repeating games “no result” so they can be replayed.

Eyes: the shape that can’t be captured

An eye is an empty point completely surrounded by one player’s stones. A group with two separate eyes can never be captured, because the opponent can’t fill both eyes at once without playing a suicide move on the second one, and suicide is illegal. This is the whole foundation of staying alive in Go.

A ring of black stones with one fully enclosed empty point in the middle, forming a true eye that white cannot play into.
A true eye: completely surrounded, safe from a single capture attempt.

Not every enclosed-looking point is safe, though. If the diagonal points around an eye aren’t controlled too, the opponent can sometimes break in. That weaker shape is called a false eye, and it can’t defend a group on its own.

A black shape around an empty point where black holds the straight sides but not enough of the diagonal corners, showing a false eye that looks safe but is not.
A false eye: the corners aren't secure, so this point alone won't keep the group alive.

A group needs two true eyes (or a bigger safe space that works out to the same thing) to be unconditionally alive. This is the idea behind most fighting in Go: attack a group by threatening its eye space, defend a group by securing it. Life and death in Go goes deeper, with the eye shapes that can be killed and the ones that can’t.

There’s one more case worth knowing: sometimes two groups from opposite colors are tangled together, neither able to make two eyes, but neither able to attack the other without dying first either. Both groups just sit there, alive, for the rest of the game. That standoff is called seki (mutual life), and it’s rare enough that you don’t need to hunt for it. Just don’t panic if you ever see a group survive without eyes.

Rulesets: Chinese, Japanese, and the others

Everything above is the same wherever Go is played. What varies between countries is how the final score is counted, how large White’s compensation is, and what happens in a few rare positions. The moves you play do not change, and in the great majority of games every rule set picks the same winner.

Chinese rules are what this site uses. The score is the area you control: your stones on the board plus the empty points they surround. Komi is 7.5 points, suicide is illegal, and repetition is handled by positional superko. Because your own stones count, playing an extra stone inside your own area costs you nothing, so neutral points get filled in at the end rather than skipped.

Japanese rules count territory instead: the empty points you surround, plus the stones you captured during the game, with your own stones on the board worth nothing. Komi is 6.5 points and suicide is illegal. Repetition is handled by a simple ko rule plus separate provisions for the rare cycles, and whether a group is alive or dead at the end is settled by a written procedure rather than by playing it out. Since your own stones are not worth points, filling in neutral points is avoided.

AGA rules, from the American Go Association, count area but use pass stones so that counting it as territory gives the same number. Komi is 7.5 and repetition is handled by situational superko. Ing rules, used for the Ing Cup, are area scoring with a komi of 8 points and their own detailed treatment of ko and ties. New Zealand rules are area scoring and are unusual in permitting suicide.

For a beginner the practical advice is to learn one and not worry about the rest. Chinese vs Japanese rules compares the two main systems side by side, and how scoring works in Go walks through an area count on a finished board.

Handicap and komi

Black moves first, which is a real advantage, so White gets a fixed number of points added at the end to balance it. That compensation is called komi. This site uses 7.5, the standard value with area scoring; Japanese rules use 6.5 with territory scoring. The half point exists to rule out a tie, since both players’ raw scores are whole numbers. Komi explained covers why the number is what it is.

When the two players are not the same strength, the game is balanced a different way: the weaker player takes Black and places a number of stones on the board before White’s first move. Those are handicap stones, and they go on the marked star points. Two stones for a small gap, up to nine on a 19x19 board for a large one, with roughly one stone per rank of difference. In a handicap game komi is usually dropped to zero, because Black is already compensated. Handicap Go covers the placements and how to use them.

A 9x9 board with four black handicap stones placed on the four corner star points before the game starts, and white to play first.
A four-stone handicap on a 9x9 board. Black's stones go on the star points and White plays first.

When the game ends

The game ends when both players pass in a row. Passing means you skip your turn because you cannot see a move worth making, which usually happens once every boundary is settled and the only points left would lose you as much as they gain.

Before you pass, play out the neutral points. Points that sit on the border between two settled areas and belong to nobody are called dame. Under the area scoring this site uses, filling one with your own stone adds a point to your score, so there is no reason to leave them.

A simplified finished board with a black wall facing a white wall, each side's settled territory shaded, and a column of neutral marked points between them that belong to neither player.
The shaded points are settled. The marked column is dame, worth a point each to whoever fills them under area scoring.

After the two passes, both players agree which stones are dead: stones that cannot avoid being captured if play continued, even though nobody has bothered to capture them. Dead stones are lifted off the board and the points they were sitting on count for whoever surrounded them. Here the board makes that judgement for you and lets you tap any group to correct it before you confirm. If you and an opponent genuinely disagree about whether a group is alive, the way to settle it is to carry on playing rather than to argue, and how a Go game ends covers the procedure in detail.

You can also resign at any point. If your opponent is fifty points ahead and nothing on the board can change that, resigning is normal and polite, not a forfeit. Plenty of games between strong players end this way rather than being played to the last point.

Once the dead stones are off, each side’s stones and surrounded empty points are added up, White’s komi is added, and the higher number wins. How scoring works walks through a full count on a real board.

You now know every rule in the game. What separates a beginner from a strong player isn’t more rules. It’s reading the board better, which is what strategy for beginners starts building. The fastest way to make any of this stick is to play a game and see where you go wrong.

Frequently asked questions

Is Go hard to learn?

The rules are easier than chess and take about five minutes. What is hard is playing well, because there are no fixed piece values and no opening book to memorise, so every judgement is yours. Beginners get through that first stage much faster on a 9x9 board, where a game takes twenty minutes and you can see the whole position at once.

How many rules does Go have?

Roughly five, depending on how you split them. Players alternate placing stones on empty intersections; stones never move; a group with no liberties is captured; you may not play a suicide move or repeat a previous board position; and the game ends with two passes, after which the area each player controls is counted. Everything else in Go is a consequence of those, not a separate rule.

Can you play Go on a chess board?

Not on the squares, but yes on the lines. A chessboard’s eight-by-eight grid of squares is drawn with nine lines each way, and those lines cross at eighty-one points, which is exactly a 9x9 Go board. Ignore the colours, play on the intersections including the ones on the outer edge, and a chessboard becomes a perfectly good beginner’s Go board. You will need about eighty stones, or coins, or two colours of counters.

What is the ko rule in simple terms?

If your opponent has just captured one of your stones and taking it straight back would put the board in exactly the position it was in a moment ago, you have to wait. Play somewhere else for one move, let your opponent reply, and then you may retake. The rule exists so that two stones cannot capture each other back and forth for the rest of time.

Not here, and not under Chinese, Japanese or AGA rules. Placing a stone where it would have no liberties is illegal unless the same move captures opponent stones, which frees up the space it needs. A few rule sets, notably New Zealand’s, allow suicide, but it is almost never a useful move anyway.

Try it on the board →