Go (game) - Rules

Rules

Aside from the order of play rules (alternating moves, black moves first or takes a handicap), there are essentially only two rules in Go:

• Rule 1 (the rule of liberty) states that every stone remaining on the board must have at least one open "point" (an intersection, called a "liberty") directly next to it (up, down, left, or right), or must be part of a connected group that has at least one such open point ("liberty") next to it. Stones or groups of stones which lose their last liberty are removed from the board.
• Rule 2 (the "ko rule") states that the stones on the board must never repeat a previous position of stones. Moves which would do so are forbidden, and thus that move must be placed elsewhere on the board.

Almost all other information about how the game is played is a heuristic, meaning it is learned information about how the game is played, rather than a rule. Other rules are specialized, as they come about through different rule-sets, but the above two rules cover almost all of any played game.

Although there are some minor differences between rule sets used in different countries, most notably in Chinese and Japanese scoring rules, these differences do not greatly affect the tactics and strategy of the game.

Except where noted otherwise, the basic rules presented here are valid independent of the scoring rules used. The scoring rules are explained separately. Go terms for which there are no ready English equivalent are commonly called by their Japanese names.