Go, the board game
- Introduction
- Rules
- Learn more
- Teammate Showcase
Introduction
This is a brief overview of the rules of Go, a 4000 year old board game. It is a total information game, and is also sometimes called the "Surrounding Game". Chess Grandmaster Edward Lasker once described it as, "so elegant, organic and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe they almost certainly play [it]." Although the game of chess has long since been conquered by AI players, an AI capable of mastering Go and beating the best player in the world hasn't been seen until very recently. Google's AlphaGo AI was able to beat the top player, and sparked worldwide interest in the game.
Rules
The rules of Go are extremely simple, but it takes decades of practice to even come close to mastering the game. The rules are as follows:
- The board is empty at the start of the game (except when a handicap game is being played)
- Black makes the first move, and White follows. Black and White take turns playing stones. Because of White's disadvantage by playing second, she gets 7.5 extra points as compensation. The half point is there to prevent draws.
- A move consists of placing a stone of the player's color on an intersection of the board.
- A player may pass to signify that they wish to end the game. Upon consecutive passes by both Black and White, the game ends and undergoes scoring.
- A stone or a group of stones may be removed from the board (captured) if all adjacent points are taken (not including diagonal points).
- No stone may be played that recreates a former board position. This prevents an infinite repetition of captures (explained in the previous rule).
- A player's territory consists of all the points the player has surrounded.
- The player with more territory/points wins.
Learn more
Go is a very complex game, and a simple page of rules doesn't do it justice. Here are a few links to pages where you can learn more about this game.
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