Play Go — Weiqi / Baduk
The ancient stone-and-territory game on a 9×9 board. You play the black stones and move first; a computer answers with white. Surround empty points to build territory, capture enemy groups by taking their last liberty, and win on area score after both players pass.
Game over
Click or tap an intersection to place a stone. Both players Pass in a row to end the game and count the score.
What is Go?
Go is one of the oldest strategy games still played today — a two-player board game invented in China more than two thousand years ago and known across East Asia as Weiqi in Chinese, Baduk in Korean and Igo in Japanese. Despite that long history, the rules are astonishingly simple: players take turns placing stones, one black and one white, on the intersections of a gridded board, and once placed a stone never moves. Yet from those few rules grows a game of near-limitless depth, where two ideas — capturing your opponent's stones and surrounding empty space — combine into a contest of influence, shape and reading that has fascinated players for centuries. On vygam you command the black stones and always move first, dropping one stone per turn onto any empty intersection of a 9×9 board while a computer opponent replies with white.
The goal of Go is not to line stones up or to checkmate a king but to control more of the board than your rival by the time the game ends. Every stone reaches out to the empty points directly beside it — its liberties — and a stone or a connected group with no liberties left is captured and lifted off the board. Around that single mechanic the whole game turns: you press on enemy groups to rob them of breathing room, you connect your own stones so they cannot be surrounded, and above all you stake out regions of empty territory that only your colour can claim. When neither player has a useful move left, both pass, the board is counted, and whoever governs the larger area — stones plus surrounded territory — wins. Because 9×9 is small, fights break out almost at once and a single game takes only a few minutes, which is exactly why it is the board every teacher reaches for first.
How to Play
Go has only a handful of rules, and a move is simply not allowed when:
- you try to play on an intersection that is already occupied — every stone must go on an empty point;
- the move would be suicide — after resolving any enemy captures it leaves your own group with zero liberties and takes nothing in return;
- the move breaks the ko rule — you may not immediately recapture in a way that recreates the exact board position from just before your opponent's previous move;
- you try to move or reuse a captured stone — stones never slide once placed, and captured stones are lifted off for good.
Go Tips & Strategy
Go rewards players who think about the whole board, not just the last stone played. On a 9×9 the balance between attack and defence tips quickly, so a few core habits will carry you a long way against the computer and against friends.
Corners first, then sides, then centre
Territory is cheapest to enclose in the corners, where the board edges already do two-thirds of the walling for you, a little dearer along the sides, and most expensive of all in the wide-open centre. Strong openings claim corners and extend along the edges before contesting the middle. On a small 9×9 the corners are only two or three points from the centre, so grabbing them early stakes out a base that is hard to invade and gives your later fighting stones somewhere safe to run to.
Make two eyes to live
A group is alive and can never be captured once it surrounds two separate empty points — two "eyes" — because your opponent cannot fill both at the same time, and filling either one would be suicide for them. Every group you care about should be heading toward two eyes; every enemy group you want to kill should be denied its second eye. Reading whether a group is alive, dead, or racing to make eyes is the single most important skill in Go, and on the small board it decides most games.
Count liberties before you fight
When two groups press against each other in a capturing race, the one with more liberties usually wins, so count before you commit. If your group has three liberties and the enemy's has two, you can often fill their liberties faster than they fill yours. Avoid starting a fight you are a move behind in, and look for moves that add a liberty to your side while removing one from theirs — a single such point can flip a race entirely.
Never play into self-atari
Self-atari means placing a stone that leaves your own group with just one liberty, begging to be captured on the next move. Unless it captures something in return, it simply hands your opponent free stones and free territory. Before you place, glance at the liberties the move leaves you: a stone that connects two weak groups, extends toward the edge, or takes a shared liberty is almost always better than one that walks into atari. Patience beats desperate contact play.
Scoring a 9×9 Game
This version uses Chinese area scoring, the counting method that is easiest to see on screen. When both players pass and the game ends, each colour's score is the number of its own stones on the board plus the number of empty points that its stones completely surround. An empty region counts for you only if every path out of it runs into your colour and never touches your opponent's — a region bordered by both sides is neutral and belongs to no one. Because Black moves first and enjoys a small head start, White is given a komi of 6.5 points added to its total, which also guarantees there can never be a tie: one score is always higher.
While you play, vygam shows a live estimate of both scores so you can feel the game tilting one way or the other, along with a running tally of how many stones each side has captured. Early on the estimate swings wildly because most of the board is still neutral, but as walls firm up and groups settle it converges on the real result. Do not chase every capture for its own sake — a captured stone is worth a point, but a stone that seals off ten points of territory is worth far more. The winner on a 9×9 board is usually decided by one or two large living groups and the borders between them, so spend your moves on life, death and the size of your walls rather than on greedily hunting single stones.
Go vs Gomoku, Reversi and Chess
Go is often confused with Gomoku because both are played with black and white stones on a gridded board, but the two could hardly be more different in spirit. Gomoku is a race to make five stones in a row and ends the instant one appears; in Go a row of stones means nothing on its own, and the game is about enclosing space and denying it to your opponent. Reversi also uses two-colour discs, yet there you flip your opponent's pieces by outflanking them, whereas in Go stones keep their colour forever and are only ever removed by capture. Chess, meanwhile, gives every piece its own powers and a single king to protect, while in Go every stone is identical and value comes entirely from position and connection.
What unites these games is that they reward reading ahead and punish careless moves, and Go arguably rewards it the most: the branching possibilities on even a modest board are enormous, which is why Go was one of the last classic games at which computers learned to beat top humans. You do not need any of that depth to enjoy it, though. On a 9×9 board a beginner can grasp capture and territory in a single sitting and play a satisfying, complete game in minutes — then discover, game after game, that there is always another layer of shape, timing and sacrifice waiting underneath.
FAQ
Is Go free to play?
Yes — Go on vygam is completely free. There is no download and no sign-up; it plays instantly in your browser on phones, tablets and computers, with a fresh 9×9 board whenever you want one.
How do you win a game of Go?
You win by controlling more of the board than your opponent. When both players pass, the game ends and each side scores one point for every stone it has on the board plus every empty point its stones completely surround. White receives a 6.5 komi to offset Black moving first, and the higher total wins.
What is the difference between Go and Gomoku?
Although both use black and white stones on a gridded board, the goals are opposite. In Gomoku you race to line up five stones in a row and the game ends the instant someone does. In Go, lines never win — you place stones to surround empty territory and capture enemy groups, and the winner is decided by area once both players pass.
What is a ko in Go?
A ko is a repeating capture. When a single stone is captured in a way that would let your opponent immediately recapture and rebuild the exact previous position, the ko rule forbids that instant recapture. They must play somewhere else first; after that the point becomes available again, which turns a ko into a running negotiation across the board.
Why is this version played on a 9×9 board?
The full game uses a 19×19 grid, but 9×9 is the classic teaching size. Games are short, fights start almost immediately, and every rule — liberties, capture, suicide, ko and area scoring — is easy to see in action. It is the fastest way to learn Go and still a genuine test of reading and shape for experienced players.
How does the computer opponent work?
The white stones are placed by a heuristic that scores every legal point once. It grabs captures when they are safe, saves its own groups when they fall into atari, extends along contact with existing stones, and refuses to fill in its own eyes or play self-atari. When only pointless, self-harming moves remain it simply passes, which is what ends the game.