What are the pieces in the board game Go?
Go (game)
Two players, "Black" and "White", take turns placing a "stone" (game piece) of their own color on a vacant "point" (intersection) of the grid on a Go board. Black plays first. If there is a large difference in skill between the players, the weaker player typically uses Black and is allowed to place two or more stones on the board to compensate for the difference (see Go handicaps). The official grid comprises 19×19 lines, though the rules can be applied to any grid size. 13×13 and 9×9 boards are popular choices to teach beginners, or for playing quick games. Once placed, a stone may not be moved to a different point.
Entertainment
Equipment varies with the game. Board games, such as Go, "Monopoly" or backgammon need a board and markers. One of the oldest known board games is Senet, a game played in Ancient Egypt, enjoyed by the pharaoh Tutankhamun. Card games, such as whist, poker and Bridge have long been played as evening entertainment among friends. For these games, all that is needed is a deck of playing cards. Other games, such as bingo, played with numerous strangers, have been organised to involve the participation of non-players via gambling. Many are geared for children, and can be played outdoors, including hopscotch, hide and seek, or Blind man's bluff. The list of ball games is quite extensive. It includes, for example, croquet, lawn bowling and paintball as well as many sports using various forms of balls. The options cater to a wide range of skill and fitness levels. Physical games can develop agility and competence in motor skills. Number games such as Sudoku and puzzle games like the Rubik's cube can develop mental prowess.
History of Go
In 1954 a complete Go board made out of stone was found in a tomb dating to the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220) in Wangdu County, Hebei Province. This board has a 17 × 17 grid, which confirms the statement by the 3rd century author Handan Chun in the "Classic of Arts" that Go was at this time played on a 17 × 17 grid:
The go board has 17 lines along its length and breadth, making 289 points in all. The black and white stones each number 150.
The earliest board with a 19 × 19 grid to have been found is a ceramic board dating to the Sui dynasty (581-618) that was excavated from Anyang in Henan Province, so sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries a change in grid size must have taken place. However, the 17 × 17 board has survived in the version of Go played in Tibet.
Go (game)
The Go board (generally referred to by its Japanese name "goban" ) typically measures between in length (from one player's side to the other) and 42 to 44 cm (~17in) in width. Chinese boards are slightly larger, as a traditional Chinese Go stone is slightly larger to match. The board is not square; there is a 15:14 ratio in length to width, because with a perfectly square board, from the player's viewing angle the perspective creates a foreshortening of the board. The added length compensates for this. There are two main types of boards: a table board similar in most respects to other gameboards like that used for chess, and a floor board, which is its own free-standing table and at which the players sit.
Computer Go
Continuing the comparison to chess, Go moves are not as limited by the rules of the game. For the first move in chess, the player has twenty choices. Go players begin with a choice of 55 distinct legal moves, accounting for symmetry. This number rises quickly as symmetry is broken, and soon almost all of the 361 points of the board must be evaluated. Some moves are much more popular than others and some are almost never played, but all are possible.
Go-Stop
A deck of Korean "hwatu" cards usually includes bonus cards. Typically there are two or three players, although there is a variation where four players can play. The objective of this game is to score a minimum predetermined number of points, usually three or seven, and then call a "Go" or a "Stop", where the name of the game derives. When a "Go" is called, the game continues, and the number of points or amount of money is first increased, and then doubled, tripled, quadrupled and so on. A player calling "Go" risks another player scoring the minimum and winning all the points themselves. If a "Stop" is called, the game ends and the caller collects their winnings.
Hasami shogi
In this variant each player starts the game with 18 pieces occupying their two nearest ranks. Since most shogi sets have only 9 pawns for each side, this game is usually played using black and white Go stones. Additionally, one-quarter (9×9 grid) of a Go board can be used in lieu of a shogi board. All the move and capture rules of Variant 1 apply, but the winning objective is different, and a jumping move is possible.
Go tactics
Go tactics deal with immediate fighting between stones, capturing and saving stones, life, death and other issues localized to a specific part of the board. Larger issues, not limited to only part of the board, are referred to as "strategy", and are covered in their own article.
Go (game)
It has been claimed that Go is the most complex game in the world due to its vast number of variations in individual games. Its large board and lack of restrictions allow great scope in strategy and expression of players' individuality. Decisions in one part of the board may be influenced by an apparently unrelated situation in a distant part of the board. Plays made early in the game can shape the nature of conflict a hundred moves later.
Zendo (game)
Pieces tend to be objects with multiple discrete distinguishing attributes; for example, Icehouse pieces, folded paper pyramids or Lego blocks. Using these, it is possible to create many different parts inside a koan. A partial list of koan attributes is below.
Go (game)
The general strategy is to expand one's territory, attack the opponent's weak groups (groups that can be killed), and always stay mindful of the "life status" of one's own groups. The liberties of groups are countable. Situations where mutually opposing groups must capture each other or die are called capturing races, or "semeai". In a capturing race, the group with more liberties (and/or better "shape") will ultimately be able to capture the opponent's stones. Capturing races and the elements of life or death are the primary challenges of Go.
Go (game)
A player may pass on determining that the game offers no further opportunities for profitable play. The game ends when both players pass, and is then scored. For each player, the number of captured stones is subtracted from the number of controlled (surrounded) points in "liberties" or "eyes", and the player with the greater score wins the game. Games may also be won by resignation of the opponent.
Rules of Go
This is the other major set of rules in widespread use, also known as "area" rules. At the end, one player (usually Black) fills in all of their captured territory, and the other (White) stones are removed from the board. Prisoners do not count. Black stones are then arranged in groups of ten—eighteen such groups, plus half the komi, plus at least one additional stone = victory for Black. So for example with a komidashi of 7.5 points, under Chinese rules Black needs at least 185 stones on the board at the end to win. Komidashi is usually 7.5 points.
Dunhuang Go Manual
The fourth section (像名弟四) discusses the symbolism of the Go board and the symbolic names given to different positions on the board. For example, the author states that "Go stones are round in imitation of the heavens, and the Go board is square in the same way that the earth is; that there are 361 intersections on the board reflects the division of the ecliptic [into 365 days]" (碁子圓以法天，碁局方以類地。碁有三百六十一道，倣周天之道數). The explicit mention here that a Go board has 361 points indicates that the author of the manual was familiar with the standard board with a 19 × 19 grid, and not the earlier 17 × 17 grid board that is attested in archaeological evidence dating back to the late Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) and from paintings dating up to the mid 8th century.
Go variants
Alak is a Go-like game restricted to a single spatial dimension.
Go can be extended to three dimensions. One example is Diamond Go, which uses the structure of a carbon diamond crystal lattice. With many such Go variants, the nature of the game changes dramatically the standard 4-connectivity of the points is changed, however, Diamond Go maintains this connectivity. Another example is Margo, by Cameron Browne, a variant played with marbles that can be stacked on top of one another.
Indigo (board game)
The board takes the form of a hexagonal grid, with one tile present at the centre and six at the edge, with even intervals. The rest of the board is empty. On the centre tile are six jewels: one sapphire and five emeralds. The six tiles at the edge have one topaz each. The edges of the board between the tiles with topazes are marked with the players' colours. Depending on the number of players, a player can either have an edge all to his/her own, share an edge with another player, or both.
Kyoto shogi
Each player has a set of 5 wedge-shaped pieces, of slightly different sizes. From largest to smallest (most to least powerful) they are:The names of the pieces combine their promoted and unpromoted values, and are puns in Japanese for words with the same pronunciations but different kanji. For example, the lance/tokin is homonymous with the name of the city 京都 Kyoto, and provides the name of the game.
Go variants
In Multi-player Go, stones of different colors are used so that three or more players can play together. The rules must be somewhat altered to create balance in power, as those who play first (especially the first four, on a four-cornered board) have significant advantage.
Gonnect
Games between skilled players often end up temporarily deadlocked, since the square Go board allows a "four corners" configuration where neither side can strongly connect; however, since players cannot pass, they eventually must start filling in the internal liberties of their groups. The player who has gained the smallest amount of territory usually loses, so building more territory than your opponent is a means of forcing a connection and winning.
Go equipment
Go bowls, or "go-ke" are the containers for the stones. Although not strictly needed to play Go, bowls nevertheless play an important role in storing the stones, and captured stones can be placed on the lids. Bowls are identical, with one holding the white stones and one holding the black stones.
Liubo
In many tombs only the Liubo board has survived (especially if made of stone or bronze), and it can be assumed that any associated game pieces have decayed, whereas in other cases the game pieces (which are often made of ivory) have survived but the Liubo board (which is often made of wood or lacquer) has rotted away. However, in 1973 a unique, complete set of Liubo equipment in a lacquer box was discovered in a 2nd-century BCE tomb at Mawangdui (believed to be that of the son of the Marquis of Dai). This Liubo set comprises the following items (the Chinese description of the items in the inventory of grave goods that was found in the tomb are given in brackets):
The six black and six white game pieces are the main game pieces to be moved around the board, and similar sets of cubic or cuboid game pieces made from ivory, jadeite or rock crystal have been found in several other tombs. In at least one case the game pieces are not distinguished by colour, but by having an engraving of a tiger on the pieces of one set and an engraving of a dragon on the pieces of the other set.
Go (game)
The traditional Japanese "goban" is between thick and has legs; it sits on the floor (see picture). It is preferably made from the rare golden-tinged Kaya tree ("Torreya nucifera"), with the very best made from Kaya trees up to 700 years old. More recently, the related California Torreya ("Torreya californica") has been prized for its light color and pale rings as well as its reduced expense and more readily available stock. The natural resources of Japan have been unable to keep up with the enormous demand for the slow-growing Kaya trees; both "T. nucifera" and "T. californica" take many hundreds of years to grow to the necessary size, and they are now extremely rare, raising the price of such equipment tremendously. As Kaya trees are a protected species in Japan, they cannot be harvested until they have died. Thus, an old-growth, floor-standing Kaya "goban" can easily cost in excess of $10,000 with the highest-quality examples costing more than $60,000.
Ghettopoly
Instead of building houses and hotels, property owners can build crack houses and projects. The seven game pieces include: a pimp, a ho, a 40 oz, a machine gun, a marijuana leaf, a crack rock, and a basketball.
Go tactics
There are several tactical constructs aimed at capturing stones. These are among the first things a player learns after understanding the rules. Recognizing the possibility that stones can be captured using these techniques is an important step forward.
The most basic technique is the ladder. To capture stones in a ladder, a player uses a constant series of capture threats —called "atari"— to force the opponent into a zigzag pattern as shown in the adjacent diagram. Unless the pattern runs into stones along the way, the stones in the ladder cannot avoid capture. Experienced players will recognize the futility of continuing the pattern and will play elsewhere. The presence of a ladder on the board does give a player the option to play a stone in the path of the ladder, thereby threatening to rescue his stones, forcing a response. Such a move is called a ladder breaker and may be a powerful strategic move.
Another technique to capture stones is the so-called "net", also known by its Japanese name, "geta". This refers to a move that loosely surrounds some stones, preventing their escape in all directions. An example is given in the adjacent diagram. It is generally better to capture stones in a net than in a ladder, because a net does not depend on the condition that there are no opposing stones in the way, nor does it allow the opponent to play a strategic ladder breaker.
A third technique to capture stones is the snapback. In a snapback, a player sacrifices a stone in order to immediately capture several opposing stones, in effect "snapping back" those stones. An example can be seen on the right. As with the ladder, an experienced player will not play out such a sequence, recognizing the futility of capturing only to be captured back immediately.
Go (game)
Players are not allowed to make a move that returns the game to the previous position. This rule, called the "ko rule", prevents unending repetition. As shown in the example pictured: Black has just played the stone marked 1, capturing a white stone at the intersection marked with the red circle. If White were allowed to play on the marked intersection, that move would capture the black stone marked 1 and recreate the situation before Black made the move marked 1. Allowing this could result in an unending cycle of captures by both players. The ko rule therefore prohibits White from playing at the marked intersection immediately. Instead White must play elsewhere, or pass; Black can then end the ko by filling at the marked intersection, creating a five-stone black chain. If White wants to continue the ko (that specific repeating position), White tries to find a play elsewhere on the board that Black must answer; if Black answers, then White can retake the ko. A repetition of such exchanges is called a "ko fight".
Go (game)
Go has also been featured in a number of television series. Starz's science fiction thriller "Counterpart", for instance, is rich in references (the opening itself featuring developments on a Go board), including applications of the game's metaphors, a book about life and death being displayed, and Go matches, accurately played, relevant to the plot. Another example is Syfy's "12 Monkeys": In the first season's episode "Atari", one of the characters explains the homonymous concept, using it as an analogy to the situation he was facing, and his son is briefly seen playing Go later on.
Life and death
Life and death (死活) is a fundamental concept in the game of Go, where the status of a distinct "group" of "stones" is determined as either being "alive", where they may remain on the board indefinitely, or "dead," where the group will be lost as "captured". The basic idea can be summarized by:
Go (game)
The word "Go" is derived from the full Japanese name "igo", which is derived from its Chinese name "weiqi" (Middle Chinese "hjwɨj-gi"), which roughly translates as "board game of surrounding" or "encircling game". To differentiate the game from the common English verb "to go", "g" is often capitalized, or, in events sponsored by the Ing Chang-ki Foundation, it is spelled "goe".
The Duke (board game)
Each player begins game with three pieces: two "footmen" and one eponymous "duke" tile. Each piece, a flat, wooden tile (known as "troop tiles") has its movement options graphically portrayed on its two sides, giving it alternating movement options based upon which side of the piece is currently facing upwards. Pieces are moved to either an unoccupied square or one occupied by an opponent's piece, which is then captured and removed from play. Each turn, players must move a piece, place another piece on the board, and use any special powers if applicable. The objective in a standard game is to capture the opponent's duke, by first placing the duke into "guard", a condition paralleling check in chess.
Gobblet
The game is played on a 4×4 board. Each player has 12 pieces of the same colour but different sizes. Players take turns to place a piece on the board or move their piece that already is on the board. Bigger pieces can be placed so that they cover smaller ones. A player wins by placing four pieces of the same colour in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row.
Go (game)
It is considered poor manners to run one's fingers through one's bowl of unplayed stones, as the sound, however soothing to the player doing this, can be disturbing to one's opponent. Similarly, "clacking" a stone against another stone, the board, or the table or floor is also discouraged. However, it is permissible to emphasize select moves by striking the board more firmly than normal, thus producing a sharp clack. Additionally, hovering one's arm over the board (usually when deciding where to play) is also considered rude as it obstructs the opponent's view of the board.
Irensei
There are two restrictions on this: (1) A line of seven stones which covers any point on the outer two lines of the board is not a win, and (2) Black cannot make a line of eight or more stones. However, when a group of stones is enclosed by the enemy as by the Go rules, the stones are removed (remember that diagonal is not considered a connection for capturing but is considered a connection for a win). Also, the suicide and Ko rules apply, and indeed are often crucial in winning the game.
Go equipment
Go stones, or "go-ishi" , are round objects placed on the board. They are colored either black or white, for each player, and normally number 181 for black and 180 for white (or sometimes 180 for each).
Pokémon Go
Although the game is free to play, it supports in-app purchases, where players can purchase additional Poké Balls and other in-game items. These items include Incense (which attract Pokémon to you as you move for thirty minutes), Lure Modules, to attract Pokémon to a fixed location, and Lucky Eggs, which double experience points gained for a thirty-minute period from use. All Pokémon are displayed with a Combat Power. A Pokémon's Combat Power is a rough measure of how powerful that Pokémon is in battle. Generally, as players level up, they catch Pokémon with higher CP.
Rules of Go
Handicaps are given by allowing the weaker player to take Black and declaring White's first few moves as mandatory "pass" moves. In practice, this means that Black's first move is to place a certain number of stones (usually the number is equal to the difference in the players' ranks) on the board before allowing White to play. Traditionally, the hoshi ("star points") – strategically important intersections marked with small dots—are used to place these handicap stones. On the board, there are nine star points: at the four 4–4 points in the corners, at the four 4–10 points along the sides, and one at the 10–10 point (the centre of the board, or "tengen" in Japanese). Smaller boards such as the and also have star points. The has 9 at the 4–4 points, 4–7 points, and the center. The board has only 5 points: the 3–3 points and the center.
TwixT
Twixt is played on a board comprising a 24×24 square grid of holes (minus four corner holes). The playing pieces are pegs which fit the holes, and link pieces which join pegs along the diagonal of a 3×2 grid. In the 3M edition, players are Red and Black; different sets may use different colors. The topmost and bottommost rows of holes belong to the lighter color; the leftmost and rightmost rows to the darker color.TwixT has been proven to be PSPACE-complete for determining the game value, via a reduction from Hex. TwixT has also been shown to be NP-complete for whether a single set of vertices can support a connecting path, via a reduction from 3-satisfiability.
These proofs are indicative of a complex strategy: the game has not been solved, no winning strategy has been discovered, nor is the outcome of the game with perfect play known.
On the 24×24 grid, tactical considerations tend to predominate. The opening phase is over quickly, and the rest of the game is spent attempting to tactically execute the plan. Hex, which has a very similar game object, may have more predictable tactics, but strategical considerations are much more important. In this sense, Hex is more like Go than TwixT, since a single move is generally less committal, and consequences may take longer to play out.
Gonnect
Gonnect is a strategy board game for two players invented by João Pedro Neto in 2000. The game is played with standard Go equipment (usually on a 13×13 or 15×15 board) and basically uses the same rules as Go, however the goal of the game is to construct a group that connects any two opposite sides.
Game
Domino games are similar in many respects to card games, but the generic device is instead a set of tiles called dominoes, which traditionally each have two ends, each with a given number of dots, or "pips", and each combination of two possible end values as it appears on a tile is unique in the set. The games played with dominoes largely center around playing a domino from the player's "hand" onto the matching end of another domino, and the overall object could be to always be able to make a play, to make all open endpoints sum to a given number or multiple, or simply to play all dominoes from one's hand onto the board. Sets vary in the number of possible dots on one end, and thus of the number of combinations and pieces; the most common set historically is "double-six", though in more recent times "extended" sets such as "double-nine" have been introduced to increase the number of dominoes available, which allows larger hands and more players in a game. Muggins, Mexican Train, and Chicken Foot are very popular domino games. Texas 42 is a domino game more similar in its play to a "trick-taking" card game.
Go (game)
"Dame" are points that lie in between the boundary walls of black and white, and as such are considered to be of no value to either side. "Seki" are mutually alive pairs of white and black groups where neither has two eyes. A "ko" (Chinese and Japanese: ) is a repeated-position shape that may be contested by making forcing moves elsewhere. After the forcing move is played, the ko may be "taken back" and returned to its original position. Some "ko fights" may be important and decide the life of a large group, while others may be worth just one or two points. Some ko fights are referred to as "picnic kos" when only one side has a lot to lose. The Japanese call it a hanami (flower-viewing) ko.
Pong Hau K'i
The board consists of 5 vertices and 7 edges. Each player has two pieces. Players take turns to move. At each turn, the player moves one of their two pieces into the adjacent vacant vertex. If a player can't move, they lose.
List of Go games
Normally playing out a broken ladder is a bad mistake, a pitfall associated with bad beginner play; the chasing stones are left appallingly weak. Between experts it should be decisive, leading to a lost game. Lee, playing black, defied the conventional wisdom, pushing development of the ladder to capture a large group of Hong's stones in the lower-right side of the board. Although Black could not capture the stones in the ladder, White ultimately resigned.
Go equipment
When placing the stone, take care that long sleeves are brushed up to avoid knocking stones already played. To place the stone on the board, as soon as the fingertip of index finger is about to reach the surface of the board, it slips to the side, allowing the middle finger to aim the stone down towards the surface and connect (the other fingers and thumb naturally spread outwards). With a little practice a stone can be placed gracefully and forcefully and with a big click. The keys to a loud click are the force of the middle finger and the late release of the stone. Once the stone has been placed, the middle finger and hand slowly lifts off the stone (trying to avoid wobbling the stone) and gently retreats back to the player.
Go variants
Tibetan Go is played on a 17×17 board, and starts with six stones (called Bo) from each color placed on the third line as shown. White makes the first move. There is a unique ko rule: a stone may not be played at an intersection where the opponent has just removed a stone. This ko rule is so different from other major rulesets that it alone significantly changes the character of the game. For instance, snapbacks must be delayed by at least one move, allowing an opponent the chance to create life. Finally, a player who occupies or surrounds all four corner points (the 1-1 points) receives a bonus of 40 points, plus another 10 if the player also controls the center point.
Cercidiphyllum
Katsura wood is often used to make gobans, i.e. boards for the game Go.
Go (game)
It is possible to play Go with a simple paper board and coins or plastic tokens for the stones, or even by drawing the stones on the board and erasing them when captured. More popular midrange equipment includes cardstock, a laminated particle board, or wood boards with stones of plastic or glass. More expensive traditional materials are still used by many players. The most expensive Go sets have black stones carved from slate and white stones carved from translucent white shells, played on boards carved in a single piece from the trunk of a tree.
Go strategy and tactics
A key concept in the tactics of Go, though not part of the rules, is the classification of groups of stones into "alive", "dead" or "unsettled".
Orthogonality
In board games such as chess which feature a grid of squares, 'orthogonal' is used to mean "in the same row/'rank' or column/'file'". This is the counterpart to squares which are "diagonally adjacent". In the ancient Chinese board game Go a player can capture the stones of an opponent by occupying all orthogonally-adjacent points.
Rules of Go
In the first diagram below, it is White's turn. White must prevent Black from connecting the marked stones to the others by playing at "a". The second diagram shows White's move. White is threatening to kill the marked black stones by playing at "b". In the third diagram, Black plays at "b" to prevent this, capturing White 1. However, by playing at "a" again, White can capture Black 2's group. This is not barred by the ko rule because the resulting position, shown in the fourth diagram, differs from the one after White 1 by the absence of the marked black stones. This kind of capture is called a "snapback".
Dai shogi
Each player has a set of 65 pieces of 29 different types. In all, a player must remember 36 different moves. Each piece has its name written on it in Japanese kanji. The writing is typically in black. On the reverse side of most pieces there are characters to indicate the piece's promoted rank, typically written in red. The pieces are wedge-shaped and their orientation indicates which player they belong to, as they point toward the opposing side. The pieces are of slightly different sizes, from largest to smallest (most to least powerful) they are:Listed below are the pieces of the game and, if they promote, the pieces they promote to. Names are rough translations that have become somewhat standardized in English. Pieces are listed alphabetically by their English name.
Go (game)
Playing with others usually requires a knowledge of each player's strength, indicated by the player's rank (increasing from 30 kyu to 1 kyu, then 1 dan to 7 dan, then 1 dan pro to 9 dan pro). A difference in rank may be compensated by a handicap—Black is allowed to place two or more stones on the board to compensate for White's greater strength. There are different rule-sets (Japanese, Chinese, AGA, etc.), which are almost entirely equivalent, except for certain special-case positions.
Impartial game
Impartial games include Nim, Sprouts, Kayles, Quarto, Cram, Chomp, Subtract a square, Notakto, and poset games. Go and chess are not impartial, as each player can only place or move pieces of their own color. Games such as poker, dice or dominos are not impartial games as they rely on chance.
Go (game)
Novices often start by randomly placing stones on the board, as if it were a game of chance. An understanding of how stones connect for greater power develops, and then a few basic common opening sequences may be understood. Learning the ways of life and death helps in a fundamental way to develop one's strategic understanding of "weak groups". A player who both plays aggressively and can handle adversity is said to display "kiai", or fighting spirit, in the game.
Go (game)
The bowls for the stones are shaped like a flattened sphere with a level underside. The lid is loose fitting and upturned before play to receive stones captured during the game. Chinese bowls are slightly larger, and a little more rounded, a style known generally as "Go Seigen"; Japanese "Kitani" bowls tend to have a shape closer to that of the bowl of a snifter glass, such as for brandy. The bowls are usually made of turned wood. Mulberry is the traditional material for Japanese bowls, but is very expensive; wood from the Chinese jujube date tree, which has a lighter color (it is often stained) and slightly more visible grain pattern, is a common substitute for rosewood, and traditional for Go Seigen-style bowls. Other traditional materials used for making Chinese bowls include lacquered wood, ceramics, stone and woven straw or rattan. The names of the bowl shapes, "Go Seigen" and "Kitani", were introduced in the last quarter of the 20th century by the professional player Janice Kim as homage to two 20th-century professional Go players by the same names, of Chinese and Japanese nationality, respectively, who are referred to as the "Fathers of modern Go".
Maka dai dai shogi
Listed below are the pieces of the game and, if they promote, which pieces they promote to. Of the 50 kinds of pieces, 21 promote to gold, 26 promote to new pieces (though some move like starting pieces, "e.g." the free cat moves like a bishop, the free earth & goer like a reverse chariot); and 3 do not promote (queen, dragon king, and dragon horse).
† The second character in 'wizard stork' is not present in most fonts: it should be 而 atop 鷦 ().
Go ranks and ratings
While in chess a player must take some risks to avoid a draw, in Go draws (jigo) are either impossible (with non-integer komi, such as 6.5 points, as is common) or less likely in the case of integer komi. Also, an average game of Go lasts for 240 moves (120 moves in chess terms), compared to 40 in chess, so there are more opportunities for a weaker player to make sub-optimal moves. The ability to transform a small advantage into a win increases with playing strength. Due to this ability, stronger players are more consistent in their results against weaker players and will generally score a higher percentage of wins against opponents at the same rank distance.
Go (game)
Vertically and horizontally adjacent stones of the same color form a "chain" (also called a "string" or "group") that cannot subsequently be subdivided and, in effect, becomes a single larger stone. Only stones immediately connected to one another by the lines on the board create a chain; stones that are diagonally adjacent are not connected. Chains may be expanded by placing additional stones on adjacent intersections, and can be connected together by placing a stone on an intersection that is adjacent to two or more chains of the same color.
A vacant point adjacent to a stone is called a "liberty" for that stone. Stones in a chain share their liberties. A chain of stones must have at least one liberty to remain on the board. When a chain is surrounded by opposing stones so that it has no liberties, it is "captured" and removed from the board.
Lotus (board game)
If you have two players, one player is given ten white game pieces while the other player gets ten black game pieces. The pieces are stacked in the middle of the board as one stack of 4 pieces, one stack of 3 pieces, one stack of 2 pieces and one stack of 1 piece. If you have 3 or 4 players then each player gets 6 pieces, stacked in the middle in stacks of 3, 2 and 1. Each player takes turns moving their pieces in an attempt to get to the exit space on the game board. A player can only move a piece that is on top of a stack or that is the only piece left in a stack. The height of the stack determines how far you can move your piece. Therefore; a piece in a stack of 1 can only move 1 space forward, a piece in a stack of 2 can move 2 spaces forward.
List of Go terms
"Moyo" is a framework for potential territory which usually consists of unconnected stones with some distance between them. The early game usually consists of competing for "moyo" by attempting to expand one's own and/or invade or reduce one's opponent's. This term is often translated as "framework", "potential" or "wall".
Dao (game)
It comprises a 4x4 playing board with four playing pieces for each player. The aim of the game is to arrange pieces in certain winning formations before the opponent can. It is unique because any piece that is moving must move as far as it can.
Go (game)
Other, less expensive woods often used to make quality table boards in both Chinese and Japanese dimensions include Hiba ("Thujopsis dolabrata"), Katsura ("Cercidiphyllum japonicum"), Kauri ("Agathis"), and Shin Kaya (various varieties of spruce, commonly from Alaska, Siberia and China's Yunnan Province). So-called "Shin Kaya" is a potentially confusing merchant's term: "shin" means "new", and thus "shin kaya" is best translated "faux kaya", because the woods so described are biologically unrelated to Kaya.
Damath
The Board and Pieces
The board is similar to a checkerboard but with a twist. All even (white) tiles on the board have a mathematical symbol which dictates the operation that will be used when a player's piece captures the opponent's piece. It has numbers labeled 0-7 on its sides to determine the coordinates of the piece. Each piece of the player has corresponding values depending on what type of damath is being played. Both board and damath pieces are mostly made of thick cardboard or illustration board.
Go equipment
One specific type of plastic stone is called the Ing stone, manufactured by the Ing Chang-ki Wei-chi Education Foundation. These are the official stones of the Ing Foundation and have some extra weight to them due to metal inserted in the middle of the stone. They are 10 mm thick and sometimes come in an Ing Bowl, which is specially designed to count them (Ing rules require each player to start with exactly 180 stones).
Rules of Go
Once a stone has been played, it remains on the board in the same location, until the end of the game or until it is captured (removed from the board as part of Step 2 or Step 3 of a play).
Go variants
Also named Tetromino Go. Devised by R. Wayne Schmittberger, each player is allowed to play up to four stones in a turn, provided they are solidly connected on adjacent points. (There are five four-stone patterns possible, two three-stone patterns, and one two-stone pattern, ignoring rotations and reflections.) There is no komi; Black is restricted on his first turn to playing no more than two stones. The winner is determined by Chinese scoring: occupied and surrounded points each count 1 point; captured stones do not have point value. The inventor suggests a 15×15 square-celled board using square-tiled pieces.
Go strategy and tactics
The whole board opening is called Fuseki. An important principle to follow in early play is "corner, side, center." In other words, the corners are the easiest places to take territory, because two sides of the board can be used as boundaries. Once the corners are occupied, the next most valuable points are along the side, aiming to use the edge as a territorial boundary. Capturing territory in the middle, where it must be surrounded on all four sides, is extremely difficult. The same is true for founding a living group: Easiest in the corner, most difficult in the center.
Go (game)
In combinatorial game theory terms, Go is a zero-sum, perfect-information, partisan, deterministic strategy game, putting it in the same class as chess, draughts (checkers) and Reversi (Othello); however it differs from these in its game play. Although the rules are simple, the practical strategy is extremely complex.
Go (game)
Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players, in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played to the present day. 
A 2016 survey by the International Go Federation's 75 member nations found that there are over 46 million people worldwide who know how to play Go and over 20 million current players, the majority of whom live in East Asia.
Computer Go
Go is a complex board game that requires intuition, creative and strategic thinking. It has long been considered a difficult challenge in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and is considerably more difficult to solve than chess. Many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to require more elements that mimic human thought than chess. Mathematician I. J. Good wrote in 1965:
Go and mathematics
A Go endgame begins when the board is divided into areas that are isolated from all other local areas by living stones, such that each local area has a polynomial size canonical game tree. In the language of combinatorial game theory, it happens when a Go game decomposes into a sum of subgames with polynomial size canonical game trees.
Go (game)
In the opening stages of the game, players typically establish positions (or "bases") in the corners and around the sides of the board. These bases help to quickly develop strong shapes which have many options for "life" (self-viability for a group of stones that prevents capture) and establish formations for potential territory. Players usually start in the corners because establishing territory is easier with the aid of two edges of the board. Established corner opening sequences are called "joseki" and are often studied independently.
Gossaum
Each Go is around 15m long, and consists of a large straw loop at the end of a long, thick cylinder, supported on poles. Two "tails", at the opposite end of the structure from the loop, serve to provide a rudimentary steering mechanism. During play, the two Go are lifted above head height by the teams, and the loops are brought into contact and pushed against one another. Due to the ritual nature of the contest, one team's Go is larger than the other, making the contest somewhat one-sided.
Rules of Go
Most Go is played on a board, but and are also popular sizes. Historically other board sizes were commonly used (notably , a predecessor of the board in ancient China). Go is also sometimes played on various "novelty" sized boards as small as and larger than . All board sizes have an odd number of lines to ensure that there is a center point, possibly to make mirror go a less attractive strategy. Generally all rules apply to all board sizes, with the exception of handicaps and compensation (whose placement and values vary according to board size).
Mojo (board game)
Mojo is a two-player, 3 in-a-row abstract strategy board game played with original and unique "thrice-sliced-dice". The pieces, handmade to order in India, are colored with non-toxic vegetable dye. The individual opposite ends of the pieces are marked with pips and numbered similar to regular dice - i.e. they total 7. It takes all 3 pieces of a color to make up a single die.
Go strategy and tactics
A fundamental Go strategy involves keeping stones connected. Connecting a group with one eye to another one-eyed group makes them live together. Connecting individual stones into a single group results in an increase of liberties; for instance, a single stone played in the center of the board has four liberties, while two adjacent stones in the center of the board form a unit with six; to capture the unit, an opponent would have to play stones on all of its liberties. Thus connected stones are stronger because they share their liberties. (While two separate stones have a total of up to eight liberties, they can be captured separately from one another.)
Rules of Go
The scoring is basically the same as area scoring, but is done with a special technique involving "Ing bowls". Both players must start with exactly 180 stones; the Ing Foundation makes special bowls that allow players to count their stones easily. Prisoners come back to the owner. After the game finishes, both players fill their empty territory with their stones. The one that gets rid of all of them is the winner. Black pays White eight points (komi) by allowing four white stones in Black's territory to be placed at the beginning of the counting phase. As Black wins ties it is 7.5 in effect. The ko rule makes a distinction between "fighting" and "disturbing" ko. Multi-stone suicide is allowed. This ruleset was invented and promoted by Ing Chang-ki.
Go (game)
Two general types of scoring system are used, and players determine which to use before play. Both systems almost always give the same result. "Territory scoring" counts the number of empty points a player's stones surround, together with the number of stones the player captured. "Area scoring" counts the number of points a player's stones occupy and surround. It is associated with contemporary Chinese play and was probably established there during the Ming Dynasty in the 15th or 16th century.
Go (game)
Common tournament systems used in Go include the McMahon system, Swiss system, league systems and the knockout system. Tournaments may combine multiple systems; many professional Go tournaments use a combination of the league and knockout systems.
Square Enix Montreal
Square Enix Montreal's "Go" series of turn-based puzzle games for smartphones and tablets released to high praise. Ryan McCaffrey of "IGN" wrote that the first two releases were the "smartest" mobile games of any console franchise. Sam Loveridge of "Digital Spy" summarized the series as immensely successful. The games use simple touchscreen gameplay mechanics to move the main characters from each screen around a minimalist board game-like puzzle. With each entry, Square Enix Montreal distills and reinterprets the parent series' essential gameplay elements for the board game format. "Hitman Go" was released in 2014, "Lara Croft Go" (of the "Tomb Raider" series) in 2015, and "Deus Ex Go" of the "Deus Ex" series in 2016. The studio released documentary videos on their "Go" series development process.
Go strategy and tactics
In a handicap game, Black starts with two or more handicap stones played before White's first move. If played in the traditional places on the "star points", these stones will be useful for the purpose of connection and separation of stones played closer to the edge ("lower"), as well as in many other ways. The White player's stones are threatened immediately with separation, while Black has many potential connections to begin with.
Rules of Go
Though boards are standard, go can be played on another size board. Particularly common sizes for quick games are and . (See also "Board size" below.)
Go (game)
Traditional Japanese stones are double-convex, and made of clamshell (white) and slate (black). The classic slate is nachiguro stone mined in Wakayama Prefecture and the clamshell from the Hamaguri clam; however, due to a scarcity in the Japanese supply of this clam, the stones are most often made of shells harvested from Mexico. Historically, the most prized stones were made of jade, often given to the reigning emperor as a gift.
Go variants
Block Go was a variant of Go played at the 20th Annual Computer Olympiad in which tetris pieces are utilized instead of go stones.
Rules of Go
The following three sections discuss the successive steps of a play in greater detail. Let us observe immediately however that, in view of Steps 2 and 3, all stones remaining on the board after any move must have at least one liberty.
Deus Ex Go
The puzzles grow in complexity by adding complications to several simple mechanics. Mechanical enemies and obstacles, such as gun turrets and raisable platforms, are hackable via computer terminals on nearby nodes. The player drags their finger on the touchscreen to connect the terminal's node and the hackable device. The character can store an invisibility power-up to move without detection while in an enemy's line of sight. When activated, it lasts two turns. The main game runs about three hours in length, and the player can purchase puzzle solutions through microtransactions. An additional puzzle design node—also new to the "Go" series—lets players make single-screen puzzles to share with others. Square Enix highlights five new puzzles in a weekly rotation. As part of a tie-in with "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided", players complete the main story and weekly puzzles in the mobile game to unlock perks in the console title.
Ko shogi
Some pieces can move only one intersection at a time. (If a friendly piece, and sometimes an enemy piece, occupies an adjacent intersection, the moving piece may not move in that direction. Unlike in Go, 'adjacent' means any of eight intersections.)
Fuseki
Fuseki (Japanese: ; ) is the whole board opening in the game of Go.
Go (game)
Go begins with an empty board. It is focused on building from the ground up (nothing to something) with multiple, simultaneous battles leading to a point-based win. Chess is tactical rather than strategic, as the predetermined strategy is to trap one individual piece (the king). This comparison has also been applied to military and political history, with Scott Boorman's 1969 book "The Protracted Game" and, more recently, Robert Greene's 1998 book "The 48 Laws of Power" exploring the strategy of the Communist Party of China in the Chinese Civil War through the lens of Go.
Icehouse pieces
The pieces are four-sided pyramids that can nest and stack with pipping from 1 to 3 at the base. A group of three pyramids, one of each size, is called a "trio." Each "stash" or set of Icehouse pieces consists of five trios, or fifteen pyramids (variously called pieces, pyramids, or minions) of the same color and five of each three sizes: five large 3-point pyramids (called "queens" in some games), five medium 2-point pyramids (sometimes called "drones"), and five small 1-point pyramids (or "pawns"). The stacked and nested feature is not used in the original Icehouse game, but is taken advantage of in some of the other Icehouse-based games listed below.
Go variants
Quantum Go is a Go variant which provides a straightforward illustration of interesting quantum phenomena. Players alternatively play pairs of go stones which are entangled, in the sense that each entangled pair of stones will reduce to a single go stone at some point in the game. A process of quantum-like collapse occurs when a stone is played in contact with one of the stones in an entangled pair.
The Go Game
Players receive customized cellphones that provide location-based clues about missions and puzzles to complete, and actors participate in the game as characters.
Go (game)
In formal game theory terms, Go is a non-chance, combinatorial game with perfect information. Informally that means there are no dice used (and decisions or moves create discrete outcome vectors rather than probability distributions), the underlying math is combinatorial, and all moves (via single vertex analysis) are visible to both players (unlike some card games where some information is hidden). Perfect information also implies sequence—players can theoretically know about all past moves.
Dots (game)
Dots (, , ) is an abstract strategy game, played by two or more people on a sheet of squared paper. The game is superficially similar to Go, except that pieces are not taken, and the primary target of dots is capturing enemy dots by surrounding them with a continuous line of one's own dots. Once surrounded, dots are not playable.
Ming Mang (game)
Mig Mang utilizes custodian capture of enemy pieces or a line of enemy pieces, and the captured pieces are replaced with the pieces of the player performing the capture(s); it thus resembles the games of Reversi and Othello in these respects. Each player's pieces are initially situated on two adjacent sides of the board (see diagram), and move orthogonally any number of unoccupied spaces like the rook in chess. It is an elimination game, as the objective is to capture all of the opponent's pieces. As such the game resembles Jul-Gonu, Hasami shogi, Dai hasami shogi, Mak-yek, Apit-sodok, Rek (Game), Seega, Ludus latrunculorum, and Petteia. The game also bears some resemblance to Go, Baduk, and Weiqi since Mig Mang uses the same 17 x 17 square board as Tibetan Go which is related to the other three games, and Mig Mang is often played with Go's 19 x 19 square board; custodian capture is somewhat related to the capture method in Go, as both methods surround or outflank enemy pieces in capturing them. Other games that might be comparable are Ataxx and its variant Hexxagōn, as these two games capture enemy pieces by placing pieces adjacent to them and converting them into their own pieces.
Mojo (board game)
"Mojo" is played with 3 pieces each and a single neutral pawn, used as a blocker, that is common to and may be moved by both players. The game starts with the pawn in the center of the board and during play, there is a choice of 2 empty spaces. Players take turns placing their 3 pieces on the board, one at a time, on any empty position, building on those already on the board, to complete and/or block winning rows. Then, continue by moving any piece (including the opponent's) or the pawn to an adjacent empty space. Players may move the pawn. Pieces and pawns may not jump over each other and the last piece or pawn moved may not be returned to its previous position. The game is over when a player has 3 same-color pieces in a row - horizontally, vertically or diagonally and is then the winner of the game.
Computer Go
The most direct way of representing a board is as a one- or two-dimensional array, where elements in the array represent points on the board, and can take on a value corresponding to a white stone, a black stone, or an empty intersection. Additional data is needed to store how many stones have been captured, whose turn it is, and which intersections are illegal due to the Ko rule.
Abstract strategy game
An abstract strategy game is a strategy game in which the theme is not important to the experience of playing. Many of the world's classic board games, including chess, Go (also called "wei-chi" and "baduk"), checkers and draughts, xiangqi (Chinese chess), shogi (Japanese version of Chinese chess), Reversi (marketed as "Othello"), Nine Men's Morris, and most mancala variants, fit into this category. Play is sometimes said to resemble a series of puzzles the players pose to each other. As J. Mark Thompson wrote in his article "Defining the Abstract": There is an intimate relationship between such games and puzzles: every board position presents the player with the puzzle, What is the best move?, which in theory could be solved by logic alone. A good abstract game can therefore be thought of as a "family" of potentially interesting logic puzzles, and the play consists of each player posing such a puzzle to the other. Good players are the ones who find the most difficult puzzles to present to their opponents.
Rules of Go
Currently, most major rulesets forbid playing such that a play results in that player's own stones being removed from the board. Some rulesets (notably, New Zealand derived rules and Ing rules) allow suicide of more than one stone. Suicide of more than one stone rarely occurs in real games, but in certain circumstances, a suicidal move may threaten the opponent's eye shape, yielding a ko threat.
Go (game)
The end of the middlegame and transition to the endgame is marked by a few features. The game breaks up into areas that do not affect each other (with a caveat about "ko" fights), where before the central area of the board related to all parts of it. No large weak groups are still in serious danger. Moves can reasonably be attributed some definite value, such as 20 points or fewer, rather than simply being necessary to compete. Both players set limited objectives in their plans, in making or destroying territory, capturing or saving stones. These changing aspects of the game usually occur at much the same time, for strong players. In brief, the middlegame switches into the endgame when the concepts of strategy and influence need reassessment in terms of concrete final results on the board.
History of Go
The board was found in the ruins of a watchtower at the tombs of Emperor Jingdi and Empress Wang Zhi of the Western Han Dynasty. The broken fragment of the board measures 5.7 cm to 28.5 cm long, 17 cm to 19.7 cm wide and 3.6 cm thick.
Go (game)
A full set of Go stones ("goishi") usually contains 181 black stones and 180 white ones; a 19×19 grid has 361 points, so there are enough stones to cover the board, and Black gets the extra odd stone because that player goes first.
Go tactics
As explained in the section on important consequences of the basic rules, some formations of stones can never be captured and are said to be "alive", while other stones may be in the position where they cannot avoid being captured and are said to be "dead". Much of the practice material available to students of the game comes in the form of life and death problems, also known as "tsumego". In such problems, players are challenged to find the vital move sequence that will kill a group of the opponent or save a group of their own. "Tsumego" are considered an excellent way to train a player's ability at reading ahead, and are available for all skill levels, some posing a challenge even to top players.