Go

Two colours, one rule

One side plays black, the other plays white. Black plays first. Each turn, a player places a single stone on any empty intersection — not in a square, on the crossings of the lines.

Once a stone is placed, it does not move. Stones leave the board only one way: when they are captured.

The breath of a stone

Look at one of your stones. Count the empty intersections directly next to it — up, down, left, right. Diagonals do not count.

Those empty neighbours are the stone's breaths. (Players in Japan call them 息, in Korea 숨 — the same word for "breath" in both languages.) In the centre, a stone has four breaths. On the edge, three. In a corner, only two.

A stone breathes through its empty neighbours. Take all of them, and the stone stops breathing.

Zero breaths — capture

When the last breath of a stone is filled by an enemy stone, that stone is captured. It comes off the board, into the captor's prisoner pile.

A stone at the edge has three breaths to lose. In a corner, only two. Corners are where stones die fastest.

There is no checkmate in Go. Every capture is small and concrete — one stone, then another, then a group.

Stones together share breaths

Place two black stones side by side, and something interesting happens — they merge into a single group. The group's breaths are all the empty points around the whole shape, not around just one stone.

A two-stone group in the centre has six breaths. Three stones in a row have eight. The bigger the group, the longer it lives — and the harder it is to surround.

But the rule is the same. Fill all the breaths of a group, and the whole group comes off the board at once. A captured group of seven stones is seven prisoners.

One breath left — atari

When a stone or a group has just one breath left — one move away from being captured — it is in atari. The word comes from Japanese and is used at every Go board on Earth, the way "check" is used in chess.

Atari is not an obligation to capture. It is a warning. Sometimes you take the stones; sometimes you let your opponent waste a move saving them.

You cannot play where you cannot breathe

Suppose your opponent's stones form a tight box around one empty point. If you drop a stone into that point, your new stone has zero breaths the instant it lands. That move is forbidden — it is called suicide.

There is one exception. If your stone, the moment it lands, fills the last breath of an enemy group, those enemy stones are captured first. Suddenly your stone has plenty of breaths — and the move is legal.

The same point, again and again — ko

Imagine: you capture a single stone. Your opponent could place a stone right back at the same point and capture yours — and you could do it again, forever. Nothing on the board ever changes.

To break the loop, Go uses a single rule called ko. After a single-stone recapture, the player whose stone was just taken must play somewhere else first. Only then may they come back to that point. The whole game changes shape because of this one rule.

Why ko makes the game feel alive

Because you must play elsewhere first, a ko turns into a marketplace. Each player makes a threat somewhere else — "answer me or I'll grab something bigger." If the threat is big enough, the opponent answers; if not, they ignore it and take the ko back.

That is why a Go game with even one ko can spread heat to every corner of the board at once. The fight in one spot decides whether that distant threat is worth playing.

What you are actually playing for

Captures feel exciting — but they are not the goal. The goal of Go is territory: empty points your stones surround. Every empty point inside your wall is one point for you at the end.

Captured stones count too — one prisoner is worth one point. But trying to win only by capturing is like trying to win a city by punching individuals. Walls win games.

Houses and eyes

Players in Japan call a surrounded empty point 目 ("eye" or "house"). In Korea, they call it 집 — "house". One small home, one point.

A group needs two real eyes to live forever. If a group has two separate empty points it surrounds, the enemy can never fill both at the same time — and filling just one would be suicide. The group is safe until the game ends.

"Two eyes live, one eye dies." Every Go player has heard this. Half of the strategy of the whole game is built on it.

Passing — the game's quiet ending

When there is nothing useful left to play, you do not have to play. You can pass. If both players pass in a row, the game is over — and both sides start counting.

Counting is gentle. Each side adds up their territory (empty points inside their walls) plus their prisoners. White also gets a small bonus called komi — 5.5 points in our app — to even out the fact that black moved first.

Ancient China, four thousand years ago

Legend says Emperor Yao invented Go to teach his son discipline. A simple grid, black stones and white stones, one rule: surround your opponent's territory.

From the very beginning, this was never just a game. It was a way of thinking.

Passed hand to hand

Go didn't spread like other games. No armies carried it. It moved quietly — from father to son, from teacher to student.

By the 5th century it reached Korea. By the 7th, Japan. Three civilizations, fifteen hundred years, and the rules barely changed.

The game of a lifetime

A serious Go game can last four hours. Players barely speak. Only the small click of stones on wood breaks the silence.

Go is a game of intuition. Masters peak in their sixties — patience and silence, slowly turned into sight.

Two stones. That's all.

You don't need to be a master.

Go has only two pieces — black stones and white stones. Just stones on a board, and the empty space between them.

Once you place your first stone, you've entered a game that's been played for four thousand years.