How to Play Go: Basic Weiqi Rules and Your First Game

A small board gives you the whole experience: placing stones, losing a group, recognizing safe territory and reaching a result. For the historical setting, see our guide to weiqi and Chinese playing traditions.

Set Up a Small Board and Agree on Scoring

Use a 9×9 grid: nine lines in each direction, giving 81 intersections. Keep black and white stones in separate supplies. Unlike xiangqi, an even game begins without pieces already arranged on the board. Smaller boards let beginners practise a complete game before moving to 13×13 or the full 19×19 format.^[1]

Agree on three things: board size, scoring rules and compensation for White playing second. That compensation is commonly called komi (贴目, tiēmù), or tiemu in Chinese. A 7.5-point allowance is familiar in Chinese-rule comparisons, but do not assume it applies to every small-board game or app setting.^[2]

Place stones on crossings, including edge and corner crossings, rather than inside squares. Take turns placing one stone or passing. A stone stays where played until captured; it never walks across the grid.^[1]

Count Liberties and Capture Connected Stones

A liberty is an empty point directly beside a stone along a horizontal or vertical line. Diagonals do not count. Same-coloured stones touching along those lines form one connected string and share its liberties. When an opponent fills its final liberty, remove the whole string; capturing stones is called tizi (提子, tízǐ).^[3]

Try this original exercise on an otherwise empty nine-line board. Label columns A–I from left to right and rows 1–9 from bottom to top. Put White at C3 and Black at B3, C2 and D3. White has only C4 left as a liberty. With Black to play, C4 captures the white stone; C3 becomes empty. Black’s surrounding stones still have outside liberties.

Reset the position and let White play first. C4 now connects to C3 and gives that string new liberties at B4, D4 and C5. Count the empty points around the entire string, once each. Counting only the original stone would miss why extending can save it.

A string with one liberty is often described as being in atari. Before your turn, identify your endangered strings and the opponent’s; a large surrounding shape is not a capture while even one liberty remains.^[3]

Avoid Suicide and Respect Ko

Under the framework here, you cannot place a stone that leaves its own string without liberties. First remove any opposing strings the move captures, however: their removal can create the liberties that make your move legal.^[4]

Ko concerns repetition. In a simple ko, capturing one stone leaves your new stone available for an immediate recapture that would recreate the previous board. That immediate recapture is forbidden. Play elsewhere; if the opponent answers elsewhere instead of securing the ko, retaking may become possible.^[4]

Do not treat “wait one turn” as permission for every repetitive cycle. The Chinese code prohibits repeated whole-board shapes in principle and gives special treatment to rare multiple-ko cycles through competition rules. Use your chosen app’s rule setting or a club referee for such disputes.^[5]

Recognize Living Stones Before You Count

Two genuine, separate eyes can make a connected group safe: an opponent cannot fill either internal space without making an illegal self-capture. A space that only appears enclosed may be a false eye if surrounding stones can be captured separately.^[6]

Two eyes are a useful survival pattern, not a command to remove everything else. In mutual life, often called seki, opposing groups can remain alive because either player would lose by filling shared liberties. A group may also connect to safety elsewhere.^[6]

At the finish, “dead” means unable to escape capture with proper play, not merely surrounded in a loose visual sense. Do not lift an opponent’s stones without agreement. Under the cited Chinese code, a disagreement is resolved by resuming play, with the player claiming the stones are dead moving first.^[5]

End the Game and Count Chinese Area Scores

When no useful move remains, pass. One pass does not compel the opponent to stop: play can continue. Two consecutive passes signal finishing; agree on the status of remaining stones before counting.^[9]

Remove agreed dead stones. Each player’s area is their living stones on the board plus empty intersections enclosed by those stones. Captured stones do not earn another point on top. In the Chinese counting convention described here, unoccupied points shared between living opposing groups are divided equally. Fill ordinary neutral points during play before passing; do not disturb mutual life merely to fill every gap.^[7]

Here is an invented nine-line tally with no shared neutral points, used to demonstrate arithmetic rather than a pictured game position:

The raw areas total 81. With this example’s agreed 7.5 compensation, White wins by 2.5 points. Add compensation once. Do not also add captured stones; apply the agreed allowance only in the method selected before play.^[2]

Japanese-style territory counting uses different bookkeeping. AGA rules introduce pass stones and a White-last requirement to reconcile counting methods. Those are not extra instructions to insert into this Chinese-style practice game.^[2][8]

Play Your First Game in Six Steps

1. Choose the board and settings. Start with 9×9, select Chinese-style area counting and write down the agreed compensation before placing stones.
2. Begin an even game. Start on an empty board with Black, then alternate one legal placement or pass per turn.
3. Check every placement. Count affected strings’ liberties, remove captured opposing strings and check self-capture and ko before handing over the turn.
4. Finish the playable boundaries. Look for unfinished territory, threatened strings and ordinary neutral points; pass when you see no useful continuation.
5. Agree on the finish. After consecutive passes, identify dead stones together; resolve disputed status through the agreed rules before removing anything.
6. Count and review. Add living stones and enclosed space, handle shared neutral points and compensation, then revisit one capture or scoring mistake together.

For practice, complete one small-board game and review one confusing moment rather than memorizing openings. Beginner teaching guidance emphasizes manageable boards, explanations when problems arise and a focused review.^[9] Other traditional Chinese games use different objectives, so carry over the habit of checking the rules rather than assuming the first capture wins.

FAQs About How to Play Go

Do captured stones earn extra points?

Not in Chinese area counting. They change the board, but the score counts living stones and enclosed empty points. Adding prisoners again would mix scoring systems.

Can I play inside my own territory?

Yes, if the move is legal. With area counting, replacing an enclosed empty point with your living stone usually leaves that area’s total unchanged, though the move can still damage a group’s shape.^[2]

Does every group need two eyes?

No. Two real eyes are a common way to live, but mutual life and connections to other safe stones matter too. Settle doubtful groups before counting.

Must someone announce atari?

No warning is required by the rules used here. Count liberties yourself; an opponent’s silence does not make a legal capture invalid.^[5]

Is the first capture the end of the game?

Only in a separately agreed capture-Go teaching exercise. Ordinary Go continues after captures and finishes by resignation or an agreed end followed by scoring.^[9]

Sources

[1] Toby Manning and Edwin Brady. Teaching Go

[2] British Go Association. Comparison of Some Go Rules

[3] Irish Go Association. How To Play Go

[4] Nihon Ki-in. How to Play Go, Part 2

[5] Chinese Weiqi Association; translated by Guo Juan. The Chinese Rules of Weiqi, 2002

[6] British Go Association. How to Play

[7] British Go Association. In the Dark? Rule Sets

[8] American Go Association. Go Congress Tournament Overview: Summary of AGA Rules

[9] Jon Diamond. Teaching Beginners