A game of Go starts with an empty board. Each player has stones (disks) of one color, black or white. The basic object of the game is to use one's stones to form territories by surrounding vacant areas of the board. It is also possible to capture the opponent's stones by completely surrounding them.

The players take turns, starting with Black, placing one of their stones on a vacant point at each turn. Note that the stones are placed on the intersections of the lines rather than in the squares. Once played, stones are not moved.

At the end of the game the players count one point for each vacant point inside their own territory, and one point for every stone they have captured. The player with the larger total of territory plus prisoners is the winner.