How long does it take to learn Go?

The rules take about ten minutes: place stones on intersections, capture groups with no liberties, do not repeat the previous position. Playing reasonably takes months, and the depth is effectively unlimited — which is the appeal.

What board size should a beginner use?

9 × 9. A game takes about ten minutes, every move affects the whole board, and mistakes show their consequences quickly. Move to 13 × 13 and then 19 × 19 as the smaller board starts feeling cramped.

Compensation points for White, because Black has the advantage of moving first. Commonly 6.5 points; the half point exists to make draws impossible.

What is a handicap in Go?

Extra stones the weaker player places on the board before play starts, roughly one per rank of difference. It lets players of very different strength play a genuinely competitive game — unusual among board games.

How does a game of Go end?

When both players pass consecutively, meaning neither sees a profitable move left. The position is then counted: surrounded empty points plus prisoners, adjusted by komi.

Do I need a clock to play Go?

Not for casual games. Club and tournament games use one, normally with byo-yomi: after your main time runs out, each move gets a fresh fixed period rather than the game ending.

Are the rules on this page the official ones?

No. This is an explanation written to get you playing. Several official rule sets exist — Japanese, Chinese and AGA among them — and they differ in scoring and repetition details. The rules that bind a given game are those of the club, federation or tournament you are playing under.

How to play Go

Go is a game about surrounding territory. Two players place black and white stones on the intersections of a grid, and the winner is whoever surrounds more empty space. The full rules fit in a paragraph: stones are placed on empty intersections and do not move; a group with no adjacent empty point is captured and removed; and you may not recreate the exact previous position. Everything else is consequence, which is why the game is famously simple to learn and unusually deep to play.

The board and the stones

A full board is 19 × 19 lines. Stones are placed on the intersections, not the squares, including the edges and corners. Black plays first, then players alternate. A stone once placed never moves — it is either captured and removed, or it stays there for the rest of the game.

Two smaller boards are standard for learning: 9 × 9, where a game takes ten minutes and every move touches the whole board, and 13 × 13 as a stepping stone. Learning on 19 × 19 first is possible but slow, because the board is large enough that a beginner's mistakes take fifty moves to become visible.

Liberties and capture

An empty point directly adjacent to a stone — up, down, left or right, never diagonally — is a liberty. A single stone in the middle of the board has four; on an edge, three; in a corner, two.

Stones of the same colour that are directly adjacent form a group and share their liberties. A group lives as long as it has at least one liberty. Fill the last one and the entire group is captured: removed from the board and kept as prisoners.

This produces the concept the whole game turns on: eyes. A group surrounding an empty point of its own has a liberty the opponent cannot fill without playing a self-capturing move. A group with two separate eyes can never be captured — it is alive, permanently. Almost all Go tactics are about making, denying or taking away eyes.

The two rules that need stating

Suicide. You may not play a stone that would leave its own group with no liberties — unless that same move captures something, which frees up liberties and makes it legal after all.

Ko. You may not play a move that recreates the exact board position that existed immediately before. Without this rule, certain single-stone captures could be repeated back and forth forever. The practical effect is that after such a capture the opponent must play elsewhere first, then may return.

Ko is the one rule where the details differ between rule sets — Japanese, Chinese and AGA rules handle repetition and scoring slightly differently. For a first game it does not matter; for a tournament, ask which rules apply.

How a game ends and who won

A game ends when both players agree there is nothing profitable left to play, which they signal by passing. Two passes in a row end the game and the position is counted — this is why a Go clock stops at a double pass.

Counting, in the Japanese method most Western clubs use: each player scores the empty points their stones surround, plus prisoners captured. Highest total wins. Chinese counting scores territory plus stones on the board and reaches the same winner by a slightly different route.

Two adjustments make the result fair:

Komi. Black moves first and that is worth something, so White receives compensation points — commonly 6.5. The half point guarantees no draw.
Handicap. A weaker player takes Black and places extra stones before play begins, one per rank of difference. A 5-stone handicap makes a five-rank gap into an even game — one of Go's genuinely elegant features, and the reason players of very different strength can enjoy a serious game together. See handicap and teaching games.

Where the clock comes in

Casual games need no clock. Club and tournament games do, and Go's timing has its own system: once your main time is gone you enter byo-yomi, where each move gets a fresh fixed period instead of the game simply ending. A typical club setting is 20 minutes plus five 30-second periods.

The reason Go does it this way is the length of the endgame. A game can run past 250 moves and the last fifty decide it in single points; a clock that simply expires would end games in nearly finished positions. Byo-yomi guarantees every move to the end gets its 30 seconds. If you are new to this, start with how byo-yomi works, then how to operate the clock.

A realistic first week

Play 9 × 9 games and expect to lose stones. Capturing and being captured is how liberties become intuitive rather than counted.
Learn to recognise two eyes. Once you can see that a group is unconditionally alive, you stop wasting moves defending it.
Play a handicap game against someone stronger. Nine stones against a much stronger player teaches more in an hour than a week of even games against another beginner.
Move to 13 × 13, then 19 × 19. When 9 × 9 games start feeling cramped, the bigger board is ready for you.
Add a clock when you join a club. Not before — a clock during your first games adds pressure without teaching anything.

Turn your iPhone into a real Go clock

Byoyomi Timer plays every Go time system — byo-yomi, Canadian overtime, Fischer bonus time, Ing — and reads the seconds aloud like a human timekeeper.

Coming soon to the App Store