Basic rules

1 Goal
The goal of the game is very simple: capture as many stones as possible at the end of the game.

2 Het spel
The game is played, normally, on a 8 x 8 board. (most common variation: 10x10)
Besides a playing field, you need 64 pieces, white on the one side, black on the opposite side. Both players choose a colour and place 2 pieces on the board. (Figure 1)

Figure 1

Black always starts the game, and then both players alternate making a move. How to make a move will be explained later.

3 Making a move
Both players alternate playing. You can only place a piece on a still available empty square adjacent to a stone, or more stones of your opponent and in a way that one or more pieces of your opponent are to be `captured'. You can `capture' pieces by enclosing pieces of your opponent between a piece of your own, that was still on the board, and your new piece. All of the 'enclosed' pieces (of your opponents colour), horizontally, vertically and diagonal, becomes yours and so they ought to be changed colour (by turning them over).

Figure 2

Figure 3

Only pieces which are a direct result of a move are being enclosed

 

Black places A (left) B and C cannot be enclosed

4 Pas
It can be, that a player cannot make a valid move that encloses one or more pieces of the opponent. He passes so the other player can move again. It is possible to have several passes after each other.

5 The end of the game
When all 64 squares are full, the game has ended. Both players count their amount of pieces and the one with the most pieces is the winner.(Sum of both has to be 64) When both have 32, the game ends at an remise. Still, it's possible that the game has ended while there are still empties on the board. This can be the case when the board is full of pieces with one and the same colour (called a wipe) or in some cases, both colours can be still on the board, but no-one can make a valid move. Both parties count there stones and winner gets the empty squares.