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Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to fence off 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.
The playing pieces are called stones. One player uses the white stones and the other black stones. The players take turns placing their stones on the vacant intersections ( points) on the board. Once placed, stones may not be moved, but captured stones are immediately removed from the board. A single stone (or connected group of stones) is captured when surrounded by the opponent's stones on all orthogonally adjacent points. The game proceeds until neither player wishes to make another move.
When a game concludes, the winner is determined by counting each player's surrounded territory along with captured stones and komidashi (points added to the score of the player with the white stones as compensation for playing second). Games may also end by resignation.
The standard Go board has a 19×19 grid graph of lines, containing 361 points. Beginners often play on smaller 9×9 or 13×13 boards, and archaeological evidence shows that the game was played in earlier centuries on a board with a 17×17 grid. The 19×19 board had become standard by the time the game reached Korea in the 5th century Common Era and Japan in the 7th century CE.
Go was considered one of the four arts of the cultured aristocratic Chinese scholars in antiquity. The earliest written reference to the game is generally recognized as the historical annal Zuo Zhuan ( BCE).
Despite its relatively simple rules, Go is extremely complex. Compared to chess, Go has a larger board with more scope for play, longer games, and, on average, many more alternatives to consider per move. The number of legal board positions in Go has been calculated to be approximately , which is far greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, which is estimated to be on the order of 1080.
The Korean name () is a native derived term, most likely originally consisting of 밭 (Yale: pàth, “cultivated field”) + *돍〯 (Yale: twǒlk, “stone”, presumed dialectal variant of Seoul 돓〯 twǒlh, “stone”). Less plausible etymologies include a derivation of , referring to the playing pieces of the game, or a derivation from Chinese (排子), meaning 'to arrange pieces'.
Initially the board is bare, and players alternate turns to place one stone per turn. As the game proceeds, players try to link their stones together into "living" formations (meaning that they are permanently safe from capture), as well as threaten to capture their opponent's stones and formations. Stones have both offensive and defensive characteristics, depending on the situation.
An essential concept is that a formation of stones must have, or be capable of making, at least two enclosed open points known as eyes to preserve itself from being captured. A formation having at least two eyes cannot be captured, even after it is surrounded by the opponent on the outside, because each eye constitutes a liberty that must be filled by the opponent as the final step in capture. A formation having two or more eyes is said to be unconditionally alive, so it can evade capture indefinitely, and a group that cannot form two eyes is said to be dead and can be captured.
The general strategy is to place stones to fence-off territory, attack the opponent's weak groups (trying to kill them so they will be removed), 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 Capturing race. In a capturing race, the group with more liberties 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.
In the end game players may pass rather than place a stone if they think there are no further opportunities for profitable play. The game ends when both players pass or when one player resigns. In general, to score the game, each player counts the number of unoccupied points surrounded by their stones and then subtracts the number of stones that were captured by the opponent. The player with the greater score (after adjusting for handicapping called komi) wins the game.
In the opening stages of the game, players typically establish groups of stones (or bases) near the corners and around the sides of the board, usually starting on the third or fourth line in from the board edge rather than at the very edge of the board. The edges and corners make it easier to develop groups which have better options for life (self-viability for a group of stones that prevents capture) and establish formations for potential territory. Players usually start near 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. However, in the mid-game, stone groups must also reach in towards the large central area of the board to capture more territory.
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.
Ko (Chinese and Japanese: 劫) is a potentially indefinitely repeated stone-capture position. The rules do not allow a board position to be repeated. Therefore, any move which would restore the previous board position would not be allowed, and the next player would be forced to play somewhere else. If the play requires a strategic response by the first player, further changing the board, then the second player could "retake the ko," and the first player would be in the same situation of needing to change the board before trying to take the ko back. And so on. Some of these 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. In Japanese, it is called a hanami ko.
Playing with others usually requires a knowledge of each player's strength, indicated by the player's go 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 rulesets (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, AGA, etc.), which are almost entirely equivalent, except for certain special-case positions and the method of scoring at the end.
The strategy involved can become very abstract and complex. High-level players spend years improving their understanding of strategy, and a novice may play many hundreds of games against opponents before being able to win regularly.
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.
In the opening, players often play established sequences called joseki, which are locally balanced exchanges; however, the joseki chosen should also produce a satisfactory result on a global scale. It is generally advisable to keep a balance between territory and influence. Which of these gets precedence is often a matter of individual taste.
The end of the middlegame and transition to the endgame is marked by a few features. Near the end of a game, play becomes divided into localized fights that do not affect each other, with the exception of ko fights, where previously, 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.
Almost all other information about how the game is played is heuristic, meaning it is learned information about how the patterns of the stones on the board function, rather than a rule. Other rules are specialized, as they come about through different rulesets, but the above two rules cover almost all of any played game.
Although there are some minor differences between rulesets used in different countries, most notably in Chinese and Japanese scoring rules, these differences do not greatly affect the tactics and strategy of the game.
Except where noted, the basic rules presented here are valid independent of the scoring rules used. The scoring rules are explained separately. Go terms for which there is no ready English equivalent are commonly called by their Japanese names.
A vacant point adjacent to a stone, along one of the grid lines of the board, 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.
While the various rulesets agree on the ko rule prohibiting returning the board to an immediately previous position, they deal in different ways with the relatively uncommon situation in which a player might recreate a past position that is further removed. See for further information.
The Ing and New Zealand rules do not have this rule, and there a player might destroy one of its own groups (commit suicide). This play would only be useful in limited sets of situations involving a small interior space or planning. In the example at right, it may be useful as a ko threat.
Both procedures are counted after both players have passed consecutively, the stones that are still on the board but unable to avoid capture, called dead stones, are removed. Given that the number of stones a player has on the board is directly related to the number of prisoners their opponent has taken, the resulting net score, that is, the difference between Black's and White's scores is identical under both rulesets (unless the players have passed different numbers of times during the course of the game). Thus, the net result given by the two scoring systems rarely differs by more than a point.
When a group of stones is mostly surrounded and has no options to connect with friendly stones elsewhere, the status of the group is either alive, dead or unsettled. A group of stones is said to be alive if it cannot be captured, even if the opponent is allowed to move first. Conversely, a group of stones is said to be dead if it cannot avoid capture, even if the owner of the group is allowed the first move. Otherwise, the group is said to be unsettled: the defending player can make it alive or the opponent can kill it, depending on who gets to play first.
An eye is an empty point or group of points surrounded by a group of stones. If the eye is surrounded by Black stones, White cannot play there unless such a play would take Black's last liberty and capture the Black stones. (Such a move is forbidden according to the suicide rule in most rule sets, but even if not forbidden, such a move would be a useless suicide of a White stone.)
If a Black group has two eyes, White can never capture it because White cannot remove both liberties simultaneously. If Black has only one eye, White can capture the Black group by playing in the single eye, removing Black's last liberty. Such a move is not suicide because the Black stones are removed first. In the "Examples of eyes" diagram, all the circled points are eyes. The two black groups in the upper corners are alive, as both have at least two eyes. The groups in the lower corners are dead, as both have only one eye. The group in the lower left may seem to have two eyes, but the surrounded empty point marked a is not actually an eye. White can play there and take a black stone. Such a point is often called a false eye.
Seki can occur in many ways. The simplest are:
The most basic technique is the ladder. This is also sometimes called a "running attack", since it unfolds as one player trying to outrun the other's attack. To capture stones in a ladder, a player uses a constant series of capture threats (atari), giving the opponent only one place to place his stone to keep his group alive. This forces the opponent to move into a zigzag pattern (surrounding the ladder on the outside) as shown in the adjacent diagram to keep the attack coming. Unless the pattern runs into friendly stones along the way, the stones in the ladder cannot avoid capture. However, if the ladder can run into other black stones, thus saving them, then experienced players recognize the futility of continuing the attack. These stones can also be saved if a suitably strong threat can be forced elsewhere on the board, so that two Black stones can be placed here to save the group.
As explained in the scoring rules, some stone formations can never be captured and are said to be alive, while other stones may be in a position where they cannot avoid being captured and are said to be dead. Much of the practice material available to players 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 kills a group of the opponent or saves 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.
Instead of responding to a ko threat, a player may also choose to ignore the threat and connect the ko. They thereby win the ko, but at a cost. The choice of when to respond to a threat and when to ignore it is a subtle one, which requires a player to consider many factors, including how much is gained by connecting, how much is lost by not responding, how many possible ko threats both players have remaining, what the optimal order of playing them is, and what the size—points lost or gained—of each of the remaining threats is.
Frequently, the winner of the ko fight does not connect the ko but instead captures one of the chains that constituted their opponent's side of the ko. In some cases, this leads to another ko fight at a neighboring location.
Go was originally played on a 17×17 line grid, but a 19×19 grid became standard by the time of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). Legends trace the origin of the game to the mythical Chinese emperor Emperor Yao (2337–2258 BCE), who was said to have had his counselor Shun design it for his unruly son, Danzhu, to favorably influence him. Other theories suggest that the game was derived from Chinese tribal warlords and generals, who used pieces of stone to map out attacking positions.
In China, Go had an important status among elites and was associated with ideas of self-cultivation, wisdom, and gentlemanly ideals. It was considered one of the four cultivated arts of the Junzi, along with calligraphy, Chinese painting and playing the musical instrument guqin. In In ancient times the rules of Go were passed on verbally, rather than being written down.
The game reached Japan in the 7th century CE—where it is called or . It became popular at the Japanese imperial court in the 8th century, and among the general public by the 13th century. The game was further formalized in the 15th century. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu re-established Japan's unified national government. In the same year, he assigned the then-best player in Japan, a Buddhist monk named Nikkai (né Kanō Yosaburo, 1559), to the post of Godokoro (Minister of Go).
Nikkai took the name Hon'inbō Sansa and founded the Hon'inbō Go school. Several competing schools were founded soon after. These officially recognized and subsidized Go schools greatly developed the level of play and introduced the dan/kyu style system of ranking players. Players from the four schools (Hon'inbō, Yasui, Inoue and Hayashi) competed in the annual , played in the presence of the shōgun.
World War II put a stop to most Go activity, since it was a popular game in Japan, but after the war, Go continued to spread. For most of the 20th century, the Nihon Ki-in played a leading role in spreading Go outside East Asia by publishing the English-language magazine Go Review in the 1960s, establishing Go centers in the U.S., Europe and South America, and often sending professional teachers on tour to Western nations. Internationally, the game had been commonly known since the start of the twentieth century by its shortened Japanese name, and Go terms are derived from their Japanese pronunciation.
In 1996, NASA astronaut Daniel Barry and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata became the first people to play Go in space. They used a special Go set, which was named Go Space, designed by Wai-Cheung Willson Chow. Both astronauts were awarded honorary by the Nihon Ki-in.
, the International Go Federation has 75 member countries, with 67 member countries outside East Asia. Chinese cultural centres across the world are promoting Go, and cooperating with local Go associations, for example the seminars held by the Chinese cultural centre in Tel Aviv, Israel, together with the Israeli Go association.
The rank system comprises, from the lowest to highest ranks:
| Double-digit kyu | 30–21k | Beginner |
| Double-digit kyu | 20–10k | Casual player |
| Single-digit kyu | 9–1k | Intermediate/club player |
| Amateur dan | 1–7d (where 8d is a special title) | Advanced player |
| Professional dan | 1–9p (where 10p is a special title) | Professionals |
Common tournament systems used in Go include the McMahon system, Swiss system, and the knockout system. Tournaments may combine multiple systems; many professional Go tournaments use a combination of the league and knockout systems.
Tournament rules may also set the following:
Two widely used variants of the byoyomi system are:
Alternatively, the game record can also be noted by writing the successive moves on a diagram, where odd numbers mean black stones, even numbers mean white stones (or conversely when playing with a handicap), and a notation like "25=22" in the margin means that the 25th stone was played at the same location as the 22nd one, which had been captured in the meantime.
The Japanese word kifu is sometimes used to refer to a game record.
In Unicode, Go stones can be represented with black and white circles from the block Geometric Shapes:
The block Miscellaneous Symbols includes "Go markers" that were likely meant for mathematical research of Go:
Although the game was developed in China, the establishment of the Four Go houses by Tokugawa Ieyasu at the start of the 17th century shifted the focus of the Go world to Japan. State sponsorship, allowing players to dedicate themselves full-time to study of the game, and fierce competition between individual houses resulted in a significant increase in the level of play. During this period, the best player of his generation was given the prestigious title Meijin (master) and the post of Godokoro (minister of Go). Of special note are the players who were dubbed Kisei (Go Sage). The only three players to receive this honor were Dōsaku, Jōwa and Shūsaku, all of the house Hon'inbō.
After the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration period, the Go houses slowly disappeared, and in 1924, the Nihon Ki-in (Japanese Go Association) was formed. Top players from this period often played newspaper-sponsored matches of 2–10 games. Of special note are the (Chinese-born) player Go Seigen (Chinese: Wu Qingyuan), who scored 80% in these matches and beat down most of his opponents to inferior handicaps, and Minoru Kitani, who dominated matches in the early 1930s. These two players are also recognized for their groundbreaking work on new opening theory (Shinfuseki).
For much of the 20th century, Go continued to be dominated by players trained in Japan. Notable names included Eio Sakata, Rin Kaiho (born in Taiwan), Masao Kato, Koichi Kobayashi and Cho Chikun (born Cho Ch'i-hun, from South Korea). Top Chinese and Korean talents often moved to Japan, because the level of play there was high and funding was more lavish. One of the first Korean players to do so was Cho Namchul, who studied in the Kitani Dojo 1937–1944. After his return to Korea, the Hanguk Kiwon (Korea Baduk Association) was formed and caused the level of play in South Korea to rise significantly in the second half of the 20th century. In China, the game declined during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) but quickly recovered in the last quarter of the 20th century, bringing Chinese players, such as Nie Weiping and Ma Xiaochun, on par with their Japanese and South Korean counterparts. The Chinese Weiqi Association (today part of the China Qiyuan) was established in 1962, and professional dan grades started being issued in 1982. Western professional Go began in 2012 with the American Go Association's Professional System. In 2014, the European Go Federation followed suit and started their professional system. plays against Russian player Alexandre Dinerchtein, seven-time European Champion and one of the few non-East Asian players to reach Go professional status.]]
With the advent of major international titles from 1989 onward, it became possible to compare the level of players from different countries more accurately. Cho Hunhyun of South Korea won the first edition of the Quadrennial Ing Cup in 1989. His disciple Lee Chang-ho was the dominant player in international Go competitions for more than a decade spanning much of 1990s and early 2000s; he is also credited with groundbreaking works on the endgame. Cho, Lee and other South Korean players such as Seo Bong-soo, Yoo Changhyuk and Lee Sedol between them won the majority of international titles in this period. Several Chinese players also rose to the top in international Go from 2000s, most notably Ma Xiaochun, Chang Hao, Gu Li and Ke Jie. , Japan lags behind in the international Go scene.
Historically, more men than women have played Go. Special tournaments for women exist, but until recently, men and women did not compete together at the highest levels; however, the creation of new, open tournaments and the rise of strong female players, most notably Rui Naiwei, have in recent years highlighted the strength and competitiveness of emerging female players.
The level in other countries has traditionally been much lower, except for some players who had preparatory professional training in East Asia. Knowledge of the game has been scant elsewhere up until the 20th century. A famous player of the 1920s was Edward Lasker. It was not until the 1950s that more than a few Western players took up the game as other than a passing interest. In 1978, Manfred Wimmer became the first Westerner to receive a professional player's certificate from an East Asian professional Go association. In 2000, American Michael Redmond became the first Western player to achieve a 9 dan rank.
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 Torreya nucifera 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 USD10,000 with the highest-quality examples costing more than $60,000. lists the regular price for a Shihomasa Kaya Go Board with legs ( thick) as $60,000+
Other, less expensive woods often used to make quality table boards in both Chinese and Japanese dimensions include Thujopsis ( Thujopsis dolabrata), Katsura tree ( Cercidiphyllum japonicum), Agathis ( 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.
Traditional Japanese stones are double-convex, and made of (white) and slate (black). The classic slate is nachiguro stone mined in Wakayama Prefecture and the clamshell from the Hamaguri clam ( Meretrix lusoria) or the Korean hard clam; however, due to a scarcity in the Japanese supply of these clams, 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.
In China, the game is traditionally played with single-convex stones made of a composite called Yunzi. The material comes from Yunnan Province and is made by sintering a proprietary and trade-secret mixture of mineral compounds derived from the local stone. This process dates to the Tang dynasty and, after the knowledge was lost in the 1920s during the Chinese Civil War, was rediscovered in the 1960s by the now state-run Yunzi company. The material is praised for its colors, its pleasing sound as compared to glass or to synthetics such as melamine, and its lower cost as opposed to other materials such as slate/shell. The term yunzi can also refer to a single-convex stone made of any material; however, most English-language Go suppliers specify Yunzi as a material and single-convex as a shape to avoid confusion, as stones made of Yunzi are also available in double-convex while synthetic stones can be either shape.
Traditional stones are made so that black stones are slightly larger in diameter than white; this is to compensate for the optical illusion created by contrasting colors that would make equal-sized white stones appear larger on the board than black stones.
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.
Manners and etiquette are extensively discussed in 'The Classic of WeiQi in Thirteen Chapters', a Song dynasty manual to the game. Apart from the points above it also points to the need to remain calm and honorable, in maintaining posture, and knowing the key specialised terms, such as titles of common formations. Generally speaking, much attention is paid to the etiquette of playing, as much as to winning or actual game technique.
The reasons why computer programs had not played Go at the professional dan level prior to 2016 include:
It was not until August 2008 that a computer won a game against a professional level player at a handicap of 9 stones, the greatest handicap normally given to a weaker opponent. It was the Mogo program, which scored this first victory in an exhibition game played during the US Go Congress. By 2013, a win at the professional level of play was accomplished with a four-stone advantage. In October 2015, Google DeepMind's program AlphaGo beat Fan Hui, the European Go champion and a 2 dan (out of 9 dan possible) professional, five times out of five with no handicap on a full size 19×19 board. AlphaGo used a fundamentally different paradigm than earlier Go programs; it included very little direct instruction, and mostly used deep learning where AlphaGo played itself in hundreds of millions of games such that it could measure positions more intuitively. In March 2016, Google next challenged Lee Sedol, a 9 dan considered the top player in the world in the early 21st century, to a five-game match. Leading up to the game, Lee Sedol and other top professionals were confident that he would win; however, AlphaGo defeated Lee in four of the five games. After having already lost the series by the third game, Lee won the fourth game, describing his win as "invaluable". In May 2017, AlphaGo beat Ke Jie, who at the time continuously held the world No. 1 ranking for two years, winning each game in a three-game match during the Future of Go Summit. In October 2017, DeepMind announced a significantly stronger version called AlphaGo Zero which beat the previous version by 100 games to 0.
In February 2023, Kellin Pelrine, an amateur American Go player, won 14 out of 15 games against a top-ranked AI system in a significant victory over artificial intelligence. Pelrine took advantage of a previously unknown flaw in the Go computer program, which had been identified by another computer. He exploited this weakness by slowly encircling the opponent's stones and distracting the AI with moves in other parts of the board.
Some web servers provide graphical aids like maps, to aid learning during play. These graphical aids may suggest possible next moves, indicate areas of influence, highlight vital stones under attack and mark stones in atari or about to be captured.
There are several file formats used to store game records, the most popular of which is SGF, short for Smart Game Format. Programs used for editing game records allow the user to record not only the moves, but also variations, commentary and further information on the game.
Electronic databases can be used to study life and death situations, joseki, fuseki and games by a particular player. Programs are available that give players pattern searching options, which allow players to research positions by searching for high-level games in which similar situations occur. Such software generally lists common follow-up moves that have been played by professionals and gives statistics on win–loss ratio in opening situations.
Internet-based Go servers allow access to competition with players all over the world, for real-time and turn-based games. Such servers also allow easy access to professional teaching, with both teaching games and interactive game review being possible.
The manga series Hikaru no Go and its anime adaptation, first released in Japan in 1998 and 2001 respectively, had a large impact in popularizing Go among young players, both in Japan and—as translations were released—abroad.
Similarly, Go has been used as a subject or plot device in film, such as Pi (π), A Beautiful Mind, , Knives Out, and The Go Master (a biopic of Go professional Go Seigen). 2013's Tôkyô ni kita bakari or Tokyo Newcomer portrays a Chinese foreigner Go player moving to Tokyo.(film; 2013) Tokyo Newcomer In King Hu's wuxia film The Valiant Ones, the characters are color-coded as Go stones (black or other dark shades for the Chinese, white for the Japanese invaders), Go boards and stones are used by the characters to keep track of soldiers prior to battle, and the battles themselves are structured like a game of Go.
Go has also been featured as a plot device in a number of television series. Examples include Starz's science fiction thriller Counterpart, which is rich in references (the opening itself featuring developments on a Go board), and includes Go matches, accurately played, relevant to the plot. Also, in 2024 Netflix released the historical-fictional Korean series Captivating the King.
The corporation and brand Atari was named after the Go term, Atari.
Hedge fund manager Mark Spitznagel used Go as his main investing metaphor in his investing book The Dao of Capital. The Way of Go: 8 Ancient Strategy Secrets for Success in Business and Life by Troy Anderson applies Go strategy to business. GO: An Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy by Miura Yasuyuki, a manager with Japan Airlines, uses Go to describe the thinking and behavior of business men.
Arthur Mary, a French researcher in clinical psychopathology, reports on his psychotherapeutic approaches using the game of Go with patients in private practice and in a psychiatric ward. Drawing on neuroscience research and employing a psychoanalytic (Lacanian) and phenomenological approach, he demonstrates how drive theory are expressed on the goban. He offers some suggestions to therapists for defining ways of playing go that lead to therapeutic effects.
Other theoretical taxonomy elements include:
In the endgame, it can often happen that the state of the board consists of several subpositions that do not interact with the others. The whole board position can then be considered as a mathematical sum, or composition, of the individual subpositions. It is this property of Go endgames that led John Horton Conway to the discovery of .
In combinatorial game theory terms, Go is a Zero-sum game, perfect-information, partisan game, deterministic strategy game, putting it in the same class as chess, draughts (checkers), and Reversi (Othello).
The game emphasizes the importance of balance on multiple levels: to secure an area of the board, it is good to play moves close together; however, to cover the largest area, one needs to spread out, perhaps leaving weaknesses that can be exploited. Playing too low (close to the edge) secures insufficient territory and influence, yet playing too high (far from the edge) allows the opponent to invade. Decisions in one part of the board may be influenced by an apparently unrelated situation in a distant part of the board (for example, ladders can be broken by stones at an arbitrary distance away). Plays made early in the game can shape the nature of conflict a hundred moves later.
The game complexity of Go is such that describing even elementary strategy fills many introductory books. In fact, numerical estimates show that the number of possible games of Go far exceeds the number of atoms in the observable universe.
Go also contributed to the development of combinatorial game theory (with Go infinitesimals being a specific example of its use in Go).
A similar comparison has been drawn among Go, chess and backgammon, perhaps the three oldest games that enjoy worldwide popularity. Backgammon is a "man vs. fate" contest, with chance playing a strong role in determining the outcome. Chess, with rows of soldiers marching forward to capture each other, embodies the conflict of "man vs. man". Because the handicap system tells Go players where they stand relative to other players, an honestly ranked player can expect to lose about half of their games; therefore, Go can be seen as embodying the quest for self-improvement, "man vs. self".
Equipment
It is possible to play Go with a simple paper board and coins, plastic tokens, or white beans and coffee beans for the stones; or even by drawing the stones on the board and erasing them when captured. More popular midrange equipment includes cardstock, a 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 (traditionally Meretrix lamarckii), played on boards carved in a single piece from the trunk of a tree.
Traditional equipment
Boards
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 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.
Stones
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. However it may happen, especially in beginners' games, that many back-and-forth captures empty the bowls before the end of the game: in that case an exchange of prisoners allows the game to continue.
Bowls
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 wood, , 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".
Playing technique and etiquette
The traditional way to place a Go stone is to first take one from the bowl, gripping it between the index and middle fingers, with the middle finger on top, and then placing it directly on the desired intersection. One can also place a stone on the board and then slide it into position under appropriate circumstances (where it does not move any other stones). It is considered respectful towards White for Black to place the first stone of the game in the upper right-hand corner. (Because of symmetry, this has no effect on the game's outcome.)
Computers and Go
Software players
Go long posed a daunting challenge to computer programmers, putting forward "difficult decision-making tasks, an intractable search space, and an optimal solution so complex it appears infeasible to directly approximate using a policy or value function". Prior to 2015, the best Go programs only managed to reach amateur dan level. On smaller 9×9 and 13x13 boards, computer programs fared better, and were able to compare to professional players. Many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to require more elements that mimic human thought than chess.
Software assistance
An abundance of software is available to support players of the game. This includes programs that can be used to view or edit game records and diagrams, programs that allow the user to search for patterns in the games of strong players, and programs that allow users to play against each other over the Internet.
In popular culture
Apart from technical literature and study material, Go and its strategies have been the subject of several works of fiction, such as The Master of Go by Nobel Prize in Literature-winning author Yasunari Kawabata and The Girl Who Played Go (2001) by Shan Sa. Other books have used Go as a theme or minor plot device. For example, the 1979 novel Shibumi by Trevanian centers around the game and uses Go metaphors. Go features prominently in the Chung Kuo series of novels by David Wingrove, being the favourite game of the main villain.
Psychological perspectives
A 2004 review of literature by Fernand Gobet, de Voogt and Jean Retschitzki showed that relatively little scientific research had been carried out on the psychology of Go, compared with other traditional board games such as chess. Computer Go research has shown that given the large search tree, knowledge and pattern recognition are more important in Go than in other strategy games, such as chess. A study of the effects of age on Go-playing has shown that mental decline is milder with strong players than with weaker players. According to the review of Gobet and colleagues, the pattern of brain activity observed with techniques such as PET and fMRI does not show large differences between Go and chess. On the other hand, a study by Xiangchuan Chen et al. showed greater activation in the right hemisphere among Go players than among chess players, but the research was inconclusive because strong players from Go were hired while very weak chess players were hired in the original study. There is some evidence to suggest a correlation between playing board games and reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
Analyses of the 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.
Comparisons to other games
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 book The Protracted Game (1969) and, more recently, Robert Greene's book The 48 Laws of Power (1998) exploring the strategy of the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War through the lens of Go.
See also
Notes
Citations
Sources
(2025). 9784906574407, Kiseido Publishing Company. ISBN 9784906574407
(1997). 9780964479616, Good Move Press. ISBN 9780964479616
Further reading
Introductory books
(2025). 9784906574155, Kiseido Publishing Company. ISBN 9784906574155
Historical interest
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