Go 围棋 • 바둑

📜 How to Play Go (Rules of Weiqi)

• Objective & Grid: Go is played on a grid of intersections (9×9 for quick games, 13×13, or standard 19×19). Black places the first stone, and players alternate placing stones on empty line intersections. Stones never move once placed, but may be captured.
• Liberties (气): A liberty is an unoccupied adjacent intersection directly horizontal or vertical from a stone. Stones of the same color connected orthogonally form a shared chain (group) sharing all their collective liberties.
• Capture (提子): When an opponent occupies the very last remaining liberty of your stone or group, that group is dead and immediately removed from the board into the capturer's prisoner count.
• Suicide Rule (禁止自杀): You cannot place a stone onto an intersection where your group would have zero liberties, UNLESS that move simultaneously captures one or more opponent stones (which opens up liberties).
• The Ko Rule (劫争): You may not make a move that repeats the exact whole-board position from the previous turn. If you capture a single stone and your stone is in immediate atari, your opponent must play elsewhere ("ko threat") before capturing back.
• Passing & Ending: Either player may Pass their turn when no advantageous moves remain. When both players pass consecutively, the game ends, and the final score is tabulated.
• Chinese Area Scoring (数子法): Under Chinese rules, your total score equals your living stones on the board PLUS the empty intersections completely enclosed by your stones (territory). White receives a 7.5 komi compensation for moving second.

🏛️ History & Cultural Heritage

Go (known in China as Weiqi (围棋), Korea as Baduk (바둑), and Japan as Igo (囲碁)) is widely considered humanity's oldest continuously played board game, dating back over 4,000 years to the legendary Emperor Yao, who according to legend invented it to cultivate strategic discipline in his son Danzhu.

In classical imperial China, Weiqi was revered as one of the Four Classical Arts of the Chinese Scholar (琴棋书画 — Guqin zither, Weiqi board game, Calligraphy, and Painting). Unlike Western Chess, which simulates a regicide battlefield, Go models the macro-economy of living space, territorial harmony, patience, and balance.

In 2016, Go captured global imagination when DeepMind's AlphaGo defeated legendary champion Lee Sedol 4–1, demonstrating intuitive computational creativity previously believed to be decades away.

💡 Classical Go Proverbs (棋谚)