How to Play

Learning to play Go from an experienced player is the best way.

Fortunately, during Seattle Go Center’s open hours (see home page Regular Schedule) staff and most members are happy to teach beginners for free.  We love Go!

Introduction takeaways says a little about why Go is interesting and explains how to play.  This document explains the rules, gives very beginner strategy tips, and has a short example game to give a feel for starting to play Go.  This document is best read as the takeaway notes from a ~20-30 minute introduction, but you can use it on your own to get started with a friend.

Very Basic How to Play Go:

Go is a game of skill between two opponents, with high-level strategic planning and detailed problem solving.

The goal in Go is to contain or surround territory by placing stones on a 19×19 grid.  13×13 and 9×9 are other common sizes for beginners and quicker games.

Black plays a stone first on an empty board.  Players alternate placing a single stone.

Players place stones on the intersections of the grid, not inside the squares.

Once you place a stone on the board, it never moves.  You can capture stones, and fully captured stones come off the board to leave empty intersections.

Stones of the same color can form groups of stones that are stronger together and can make shapes that can never be captured.  Groups surround territory or empty intersections that determines the score for each player at the end of the game.

A stone or a group of stones has perpendicular lines coming out from the stones.  Each line is a “liberty”.  If you play stones that cover all the liberties of your opponent’s group of stones, then you have captured the opponent’s stones.  After you play the last stone that covers the last liberty of a group, you remove the group of stones from the board and save them as prisoners until the end of the game.

You may not make a move that repeats a previous board position, known as “the rule of ko”.

Play ends when both players agree that there are no more moves that increase their territories or reduce their opponent’s territory.  Each player says “pass” consecutively to say they are done.  For beginner’s, realizing you are done can be confusing, but there is no harm done by continuing to play, as long as you don’t fill in your own territory with your stones.

Professional Games to Watch

By clicking the triangles, you can go through the game.