Go/Strategy and Tactics

The game of Go has simple rules and can be learned very quickly, but players will soon seek guidance on the strategy and tactics of the game.

Connection and Separation

Stones on the board are easier to defend in groups; connecting a group along the lines makes it harder to capture, since the opponent would need to cover all the liberties of the group, capturing the group completely, rather than capturing single stones. A good tactic to employ, then, is to attempt to divide the opponent into separate groups, while keeping one's own stones connected. (Note that when Black starts with a high handicap, his stones are mainly useful for this purpose; the White player's stones are threatened immediately with separation, while Black has many potential connections to begin with.)

Life and Death

At the end of the game, groups that cannot avoid being captured during normal play are removed as captures. Groups can reach this state much earlier during play; because of the tactic of separation discussed above, a group of stones can quickly run out of options and further play to save it is fruitless. Similarly, further play to kill such a group is often of no benefit (unless required to gain liberties for an own group), since if it remains on the board at the end of the game it is captured anyway. Thus groups can be considered "dead as they stand", or just dead, by both sides during the course of the game.

Groups enclosing an area completely can be harder to kill. Normally, when a play causes an area completely enclosed by the opponent to become filled, the group filling the area is captured since it has no remaining liberties (such a play is called "suicide", for obvious reasons). Only if the last play inside the area would kill the enclosing group, thus freeing one or more liberties for the group that filled the space, can the play be considered. This can only be achieved if the liberties on the outside of the enclosing group have been covered first. Thus, enclosing an area of one or more liberties (called an eye) can make the group harder to kill, since the opponent must cover all of its external liberties before covering the final, internal liberty.

From this, it is possible to create groups that cannot be killed at all. If a group encloses two or more separate areas (two or more eyes), the opponent cannot simultaneously fill both of them with a single play, and thus can never play on the last liberty of the group. Such a group, or a group that cannot be prevented from forming such an enclosure, is called alive.

Much of the tactical fighting in Go focuses on making one's own groups live, by ensuring they can make two eyes, and on making the opponent's groups die, by denying them two eyes.

Thickness and Lightness

Attack and Defense

Territory and Influence

Ko Fighting