Go

About the game

Two players, Black and White, take turns placing stones on the intersections of a grid. A stone or group of stones with no free neighbouring point (no liberties) is captured and removed. The aim is to surround more of the board than your opponent. When neither side has a useful move left, you both pass and the game is scored: your stones plus the empty points you surround, with a small bonus (komi) for White.

The board is nine by nine, a size that is quick to play and good for learning. The game enforces the ko rule and forbids suicide, and the computer opponent comes in three strengths. You can also play a friend on the same screen or let the computer play itself.

Playing it here

Click Play against the computer (or another mode), then click an intersection. Press P when you have nothing useful left to play.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Take the centre and the corners early. On a small board the middle points matter most.

Count liberties. A group with one liberty left is in danger.

Pass when you are done. Filling your own territory loses points.

Credits and licence

Go is one of the games in LittleJS Arcade, a collection by Frank Force built on his open-source LittleJS engine and released under the MIT licence. The pictures are drawn in code and the sounds are synthesised, so the game has no image or audio files. The author's repository includes AI-assistant guidance files, so the collection was written with the help of AI tools. The licence text is linked from this page and the source code is on GitHub.