Go
By Frank Force · MIT license. Source · All credits
About Go
Go on a 9x9 board, which is the size most people learn on. Surround empty space to claim territory and surround your opponent's stones to capture them. Short enough to finish in a few minutes, deep enough to keep pulling you back.
How to play
Tap an intersection to place a stone. Use Pass when you have no move worth making.
Rules of Go
- This board is 9x9, the size normally used for a short game. Black plays first and players alternate placing one stone on an intersection.
- Stones do not move once placed. A stone or a connected group is captured and removed when its last adjacent empty point, called a liberty, is filled.
- You may not play a move that leaves your own group with no liberties, unless that same move captures.
- The ko rule stops immediate repetition: you cannot recapture in a way that returns the board to the position it just had.
- Either player may pass. Two passes in a row end the game.
- Scoring here is area scoring: your score is the empty points you surround plus your stones on the board. White receives 7 points of komi to offset moving second, and the higher total wins.
- You can play the computer at three strengths, or hand the device back and forth for a two-player game on the same board.
Controls
- Tap an intersection to place a stone
- Pass when you have no useful move
What makes it worth playing
- Go on a nine by nine board, which is the right size to learn on
- Surround territory to score it
- Captures are counted live for both sides
- Short enough to finish in a sitting, unlike the full board
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-08-26.
Tips from playing it
- Play on the third and fourth lines early. The very edge gives up too much and the middle is hard to hold.
- Make two separate eyes and a group can never be captured.
- Do not answer every move. Sometimes taking a bigger point elsewhere is worth more.
Why this game is here, and what we changed
Picked from the MIT-licensed LittleJS Arcade by Frank Force after checking the licence at source rather than trusting the repository label, and after confirming the game makes no requests to any other site. We host it on our own servers, so it loads straight into the game with no third-party ad code and no pre-roll video. We played it through on a real phone-sized screen on 2026-08-26 before publishing this page, and the screenshots above are 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
- Board
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Players
- One player against the computer at three difficulty levels, or two players sharing one device.
- Difficulty
- Simple rules, a lifetime of depth
- Typical session
- 8 to 20 minutes a game
- Last tested by us
- 2026-08-26
- Created by
- Frank Force (MIT)
