How to play Go — the rules in 10 minutes

Go has five rules and takes a lifetime to master. This page teaches all five, in the order you actually need them, and gets you into your first game on a 9×9 board.

1. The board and the stones

Go is played on a grid. Stones go on the intersections, not inside the squares — this is the single most common beginner mistake. Black plays first, then players alternate. A placed stone never moves again; it can only be captured and removed.

The standard board is 19×19, but nobody should start there. Use 9×9: same rules, one-tenth of the game length, and you get to the interesting part immediately.

2. Liberties and capture

Every stone has liberties — the empty intersections directly next to it (up, down, left, right; diagonals do not count). A stone in the middle of the board has four liberties, one on the edge has three, one in the corner has two.

Stones of the same colour that touch each other form a group and share their liberties. When a group's last liberty is filled by the opponent, the whole group is captured and removed from the board.

3. Suicide is illegal

You may not play a stone that would immediately leave your own group with zero liberties. One exception: if that same move captures enemy stones, the capture happens first, the liberties open up, and the move is legal. This exception is what makes many sharp tactics possible.

4. Ko — no infinite loops

Sometimes a single-stone capture can be immediately recaptured, which would repeat the position forever. The ko rule forbids recreating the board position of your opponent's previous turn. You must play somewhere else first — a ko threat — and only then may you take back. Ko fights are a whole strategic layer of the game.

5. Two eyes: life and death

An eye is an empty point completely surrounded by one colour. A group with two separate eyes can never be captured, because the opponent would have to fill both, and filling the last one would be suicide.

This is the heart of Go. Every fight is ultimately about whether a group can make two eyes, or be prevented from making them.

6. Ending the game and scoring

When neither player can gain anything, both pass. Two passes in a row end the game. Then dead stones inside enemy territory are removed and the points are counted.

• Chinese (area) scoring: your stones on the board + the empty points you surround. Komi 7.5.
• Japanese (territory) scoring: the empty points you surround + prisoners you captured. Komi 6.5.

The two systems almost always produce the same winner. If you are unsure which to use, play Chinese rules — the counting is simpler and there are fewer edge cases. We wrote a full comparison in Japanese vs Chinese rules.

Your first game: a practical plan

1. Play 9×9 against a beginner-level AI, not a human — no pressure and no waiting.
2. Take corners first, then sides, then the centre. Corners need the fewest stones to surround.
3. Do not try to capture everything. Surrounding territory wins games; hunting stones loses them.
4. When a group of yours has one liberty, either save it or accept the loss and play elsewhere. Beginners lose most games by dragging a dead group around the board.
5. After each game, solve two or three tsumego puzzles. Twenty minutes of puzzles is worth several games.

TseGo has an interactive 12-step tutorial that teaches exactly these rules on a real board, and rank-based AI opponents from 20 kyu upward, so your first opponent plays like a beginner rather than crushing you.