Go 9x9
—
- Category
- Board
- Players
- 1
- Controls
- Tap
- Board
- 9 x 9
- Loads
- No download
Controls
| Tap an empty point | Place a stone. |
| Pass | Give up your move — two passes end the game. |
Next up
| Tap an empty point | Place a stone. |
| Pass | Give up your move — two passes end the game. |
Go has two rules and more depth than almost any other game. Place a stone on an empty point; a group with no adjacent empty points is captured and removed. Whoever surrounds more territory at the end wins. That is genuinely all of it.
The nine by nine board is where beginners are told to start, and for good reason: a full nineteen by nineteen game takes an hour and hides its lessons in a fog of possibilities, whereas a small board produces a real fight in a few minutes with the same underlying ideas.
Play on the third and fourth lines. The very edge is easy to surround and the centre is hard to hold, so the balance between territory and influence lives a couple of lines in.
Count liberties before you fight. A group with two empty points beside it is in immediate danger, and rescuing it usually costs more than it is worth.
Do not fill your own eyes. A group with two separate internal empty points can never be captured, and playing into one destroys the very thing keeping it alive.
Take the corners first. Corner territory needs the fewest stones to enclose, then the sides, then the centre. That order holds at every level of the game.
A group with no adjacent empty points is removed from the board.
Almost. You cannot play a move that leaves your own group with no liberties, and you cannot immediately retake in a ko.
By area: your stones plus the empty points only you surround, with White receiving a small compensation for moving second.
It is the standard teaching size. The full board uses identical rules but takes far longer.
No. Go 9x9 runs entirely inside this page, so it starts the moment the page opens. There is nothing to download, no plugin, and no account to create.