Capture Go
Capture Go refers to go variants that start off simple and are designed to lead step by step to regular go. Many of the questions that puzzle beginners do not arise in capture go.
The simplicity of capture go does not mean that it is an inferior game. In fact, in my (Bill Spight's) view, capture go is an even more strategical game than regular go.
In Capture Go the object is to capture one or more of the opponent's stones. It may sound like capture go is a highly tactical game, but against competent opposition, capturing even one stone can be quite difficult to do. In fact, the board may become nearly full of stones before a capture becomes possible. For that reason, capture go is played on small boards.
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Rules
Capture go is played on a rectangular grid of lines, called the
board. Typically the board is a square. The intersections of the board are called
points.
There are two players, called
Black and
White. Each player has a number of (possibly virtual) pieces called
stones, distinguishable by color as belonging to Black or White.
The players take turns, starting with Black. On her turn, a player plays one of her stones on an empty point and removes all enemy stones, if any, that she has captured by that play. (Capture is explained below.) Each player retains as
prisoners stones that she has captured.
A
unit is a stone or stones of the same color that are connected via horizontally or vertically adjacent intersections, called
neighbors. An empty point that is a neighbor to a unit is called a
dame (pronounced
dah-meh).
To
capture a unit a player plays a stone on (fills) the last dame of that unit. A player may capture more than one unit with the same play.
A player may not play a stone that makes no capture and forms a unit with no dame. Such a play is called a
suicide, and is illegal.
Depending on the variant of capture go, the game ends when one player has accumulated a specified number of prisoners. That player wins the game.
If a player on her turn cannot make a play, i.e., has only illegal plays, that player loses, and the other player wins.
Capture-One is also called the Capture Game and to win a player may capture one or more stones.
Other forms of capture go have somewhat different rules.
{More to come, OC.
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