KGS Go Tutorial: Scoring

Go Tutorial Index

  1. Introduction
  2. Basics
  3. Chains
  4. Liberties
  5. Captures
  6. Capture Go
  7. More on Captures
  8. Eyes
  9. Living Groups
  10. Scoring
  11. Game End
  12. Ko
  13. Play Go!
  14. Last Notes

Remember that in real go (not capture-go), the game keeps going after a capture. In a real game of go, the players score points at the end of the game and the best score wins.

There are two ways to keep score in Go; one counts captures as points (sometimes called Japanese counting), the other counts living stones as points (sometimes called Chinese counting). The two usually add up to the same score, and on the KGS Go Server you can play with either system. Here we'll count living stones as points.

In go, at the end of the game, you get one point for every living stone that you have on the board, plus one point for every space in one of your eyes. For example, the living group here is worth 13 points (ten for the stones in the group, one point for the small eye, and two points for the bigger eye):

Sorry, you need to have the java plugin enabled for the applet to work.

Now you can try out the quiz below. Do as many problems as you like, then move on to the next page of the tutorial.

Sorry, you need to have the java plugin enabled for the applet to work.
Previous: Living Groups
Next: Game End

KGS