Play Capture-Go Online - or Play Real Go!
Not sure how to play Go? The rules are very simple. Follow this external link for a tutorial.
Capture-Go (also known as "atari-Go") is a simplified version of the game of Go:
- The first player to capture something wins.
- One cannot play pass.
- Press "Start game" to start
- Click on the board to play.
- Check the game status on the right of the board
- When done, press "Reset" to start all over
Playing capture-Go is an excellent way for beginners to learn about the tactical fundamentals of Go. It is one of the first steps after learning the rules of Go.
The consequence of not allowing passes is that one has to build territories, so it's not very different compared to regular Go.
You can customize the board size, the type and strength of the computer opponent. You can even use this applet to play "capture Go" with another human player
Is Capture-Go too difficult, or do you feel like taking a break? Check out the "If You Need to Take a Brief Break From Go" page.
About the Capture-Go applet
There are two types of computer players:
- Greedy - just statical evaluation of the position, and the best move is chosen. No read ahead. This is the weakest one.
- Alpha-Beta - reads ahead up to a given depth, then evaluates the position. Use the Settings button to customize the computer power by changing the reading depth (can be slow if it is more than 5, depending on what computer you are using) and the number of candidates to consider at each move. The bigger the number, the stronger (but slower) will your Alpha-Beta computer opponent be.
The Settings dialog pops up only for the Alpha-Beta computer player.
Credits
- Using Mark Boon's free Tesuji Go Library to handle fights involving groups with 2 liberties (most commonly ladders)
- Using the drawing code for realistic stones graphics from Jago
Resources
If you want to know more about game trees (minmax, alpha-beta, etc) here is an excellent article by Dave Dyer: "Searches, tree pruning and tree ordering in Go"