Template:Simplegorules
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- Two players, black and white, take turns placing a stone (game piece) on the points (intersections) of a 19 by 19 board (grid). Black moves first.
- Stones must have liberties (empty adjacent points) to remain on the board. Stones connected by lines are called chains, and share their liberties.
- When a stone or a chain of stones is surrounded by opponent stones, so that it has no more liberties, it is captured and removed from the board.
- "Ko rule": A stone cannot be played on a particular point, if doing so would recreate the board position after the same player's previous turn.
- A player may pass instead of placing a stone. When both players pass consecutively, the game ends and is then scored.
- A player's score is the number of empty points enclosed only by his stones plus the number of points occupied by his stones. The player with the higher score wins.
This is the essence of the game of Go. The possibility and threat to capture opposing stones provides strategic variation and makes the game interesting. (Also see strategy.)
For a more detailed treatment, see Go rules. Note in particular that there are other rulesets which count the score differently, yet almost always produce the same result.
Go allows one to play not only even games (games between players of roughly equal strength) but also handicap games (games between players of unequal strength), see optional rules.