This is not what I wanted, take me BACK
| Capturing Opponent's Stones
Yay, you get to kill things



I won't lie to you. While capturing opponent's stones is not the ultimate goal of Go, it is one of the ways to make points and it certainly is fun. Wanna know how to do it?
A stone, or a group of stones is captured, when it no longer has any empty space directly next to it (follwoing the lines). That is when it is tightly surrounded.


The empty spaces next to a stone are called liberties.

liberties.jpg, 98kB
As you can see, a stone anywhere above 1st line initially has 4 liberties. Stone on the edge has 3 and stone in the corner has only 2 liberties! That means that to capture a lone stone in the corner all you need are two moves, while in the center you would need four.


If a stone, or a group of stones, has only one liberty left (capture is iminent), we say that it is in Atari.

If you fill a last liberty of opponent's stone, that stone is taken away from the board and added to your captures, where it earns you a point. The same applies to groups of several stones (and you get a point for each stone).


Let's practice, shall we? (All the puzzles here are black to play!)



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In reality, killing stones is not so easy. Your opponent does not usually just wait until you manage to surround all the sides. But there are some tricks I will teach you later, to give you the edge.

Awesome, you are almost there. Really. Go has simple rules.



Actually, let me get back to this one later
EZ, I got this, what's next?