Go

What it is

Two people sit facing each other across a board of crossing lines. One has black stones, the other white. In turn each sets a stone on a vacant crossing. A stone, once set down, stays where it is, though it can be taken off the board if the other player surrounds it along the lines. The object is space: at the close, each player counts the empty crossings their stones have walled off, and the larger total wins. The rules themselves are brief. What grows out of them is not, since every move opens fresh possibilities on both sides.

Origins and history

The game's home is China, where it is called weiqi, and its story there runs back over two and a half thousand years. A game is recorded in 548 BCE, the oldest such record known. The earliest writing that mentions it is the Zuo Zhuan, an annal of about the 4th century BCE. In ancient China it counted among four accomplishments looked for in a cultivated scholar. Play moved eastward: it was established in Korea by the 5th century CE, and in Japan by the 7th. Boards of 17 lines were used in earlier centuries, but the 19-line board was already the norm by then, and it has stayed so.

Play and scoring

A game usually opens in the corners and along the sides, since the edge of the board helps a group of stones hold ground. Stones that touch along the lines, never diagonally, form one group and live or die as a unit. A group is safe once it encloses two separate empty points, because an opponent cannot fill the last of them without losing stones in return. Play then pushes out into the wide middle. When neither player sees anything worth gaining, both pass and the board is counted. Compared with chess, the board is larger, games last longer, and each turn offers far more choices. On a 19-line board there are roughly 2.1×10^170 legal positions, more than every atom estimated to exist in the visible universe.

Ranks and rule sets

Players judge one another by rank. A beginner sits far down a ladder of kyu grades and climbs toward the first kyu; the dan grades come next, seventh being the highest for amateurs, while professionals run from first to ninth dan. Where ranks are uneven, the weaker player may take a handicap, playing extra stones before the game begins. Four rule sets are common: Korean, Japanese, Chinese and American. They agree on almost everything and part ways only over rare positions and the way the final score is counted.

The name and its forms

In English the game is called Go, shortened from the Japanese igo, which in turn comes from the Middle Chinese name. In China it is weiqi, meaning roughly the board game of encircling. In Korea it is baduk, a native word, perhaps built from older terms for a cultivated field and for a stone. Japanese writes it 囲碁, or simply 碁. English speakers capitalise Go to keep it apart from the ordinary verb. The Ing Chang-ki Foundation, which sponsors events, spells the name goe.

How Go is kept

Two players sit on opposite sides of the board, each with a bowl of stones. Black moves first. They take turns, one stone at a time, until both decide nothing is left worth playing and pass, or until one of them resigns. The stones then stay where they are while the players work out which groups are alive and which are dead, lift the dead stones away, and count. In clubs and tournaments the game is timed. Ordinary games may run for hours, and some professional matches are split across two days.

When and where

No season or feast day is tied to Go. It is played through the year, indoors, whenever two people and a board are at hand. Clubs tend to meet in the evening or at weekends, and tournaments fall throughout the calendar; there is no month or weekday that belongs to the game.

Go belongs to East Asia above all. Most of the people who play it live there, and Japan, China and South Korea each have long professional circuits and their own habits of study and teaching. From those countries it has travelled widely. National federations now exist in many parts of the world, and the International Go Federation counted 75 member nations in its 2016 survey.

What Go means

For those who play it seriously, the game is more than a pastime. It rewards patience over force, and it teaches that a player must sometimes let stones die in one place to gain more elsewhere. Every group has to be watched for the moment it can stand on its own. Players speak of kiai, a fighting spirit that shows itself both in attack and in holding steady under pressure. These qualities, rather than the board itself, are what keep people coming back.

Questions people ask about Go

See also

KarutaJapanese playing cards from the 16th century, still raced over poems each New YearKendoA Japanese martial art of swordsmanship using bamboo swords and protective armourHunting with eaglesThe Central Asian tradition of hunting foxes and hares from horseback with golden eagles.CujuAn ancient Chinese kicking game played without hands using a stuffed or air-filled ball

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle
• Lee Se-dol confident about beating AlphaGoThe Korea Times, Article
• BBC NEWS | Asia-PacificBBC, Article
• Lee Se-dol confident about beating AlphaGoThe Korea Times, Article
• BBC NEWS | Asia-PacificBBC, Article

• Go (game) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.