Capture Go
By Frank Force · MIT license. Source · All credits
About Capture Go
Capture Go is how Go is normally taught, and it is a real game in its own right. The board is 9x9 and the full rules of capture apply, but the win condition is cut down to one thing: capture any group and you have won. That removes territory counting, which is the part that puts people off Go, and leaves the part that is actually fun, which is reading two moves ahead and noticing your own group has run out of air. You can play the computer or hand the device to someone else.
How to play
Tap an intersection to place a stone. Surround an opponent group so it has no empty points left beside it, and you win immediately.
Rules of Capture Go
- The board is 9x9 and players alternate placing one stone on any empty intersection. Black plays first.
- Stones never move once placed. They only leave the board by being captured.
- A group is captured when every empty point touching it is filled by the opponent.
- You may not play a stone that would leave your own group with no liberties, unless that same move captures.
- Ko: you cannot immediately recapture in a way that returns the board to the position it just had.
- The first player to capture any group, even a single stone, wins the game.
Controls
- Tap an intersection to place a stone
- R restarts the game
What makes it worth playing
- 9x9 board, the size Go is usually taught on
- Play the computer, play a person on the same device, or watch the computer play itself
- Full capture rules: no suicide, and ko is enforced
- First capture ends it, so a game takes minutes rather than an hour
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-08-27.
Tips from playing it
- Count liberties, which are the empty points touching a group. A group down to one is in atari and dies next move unless you give it air.
- Playing on the edge looks safe and is not. A stone on the side starts with fewer liberties than one in the middle.
- Watch your own groups as closely as theirs. Most losses here are a group you stopped looking at.
Why this game is here, and what we changed
Chosen because Strategy had one game in it, and because this is the rare board game that teaches itself in a sentence. Its source calls the variant Atari Go, which is the standard Go term for a group with one liberty left and has nothing to do with the company. We host it on our own servers, so it loads straight into the page with no third-party ad code and no pre-roll video, and its MIT licence is kept alongside it. We played it through at phone size on 2026-08-27 before publishing this page, and the screenshots above come from that session rather than from the original project.
More on how we pick and fix these: what we changed in the open-source games and how we test a game.
- Category
- Strategy
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Players
- One player against the computer at three strengths, or two players sharing one device.
- Difficulty
- Simple rules, real depth
- Typical session
- 3 to 8 minutes a game
- Last tested by us
- 2026-08-27
- Created by
- Frank Force (MIT)
