About  Go  Selection

Go is an ancient Chinese game of strategy where two players — one using tokens (stones) of black color, another of white — struggle for capturing a territory.  Territory is secured by encircling groups of empty nodes on rectangular (19 by 19 lines) grid (board) by an uninterrupted line of stones of the same color placed into grid nodes.  Conflicts that accompany such struggle are resolved basing on the rule that a player can capture opponent's stones (remove them from the board) by completely encircling them.  Each empty intersection within encircled territory, and each captured opponent's stone count as point towards a player's score.  Player with the higher score (at least one point more than the opponent) is declared to be a winner.  This simple model gives rise to one of the most challenging intellectuial games of virtually infinite complexity.

During it's history of estimated 5 thousand years Go had spread from China into other oriental countries, and had aquired many different names and slight variations of it's rules.  This web site follows Japanese terminology and rules that tend to make game a little shorter than one played by Chinese rules.  For details of Go rules see Basic and Additional rule sections, and Glossary for explanations of Go terminology.


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