Open table
A fresh deal every time you sit down.
House rules
Nine Stones
Go on a nine-by-nine board with area scoring, a ko rule and a patient computer opponent. Every day brings three capture puzzles to solve.
- Room
- Boards
- Game
- Go
- Made for
- 2008
Play Nine Stones
Free, no sign-up. Mouse, touch or keyboard.
How to play
- Click a point to place a stone.
- Arrows + Enter place at the cursor.
- G or the Pass button passes; two passes end the game.
- U undo, H hint, Q end.
- Capture dead stones before you pass.
- P to pause.
On touch
- Tap a point to place a stone.
- Pass, Undo, Hint and End sit along the bottom.
Take as long as you like. Pause any time with P; calm mode turns off every flash and shake.
Maker’s note
Go on the small board is the quickest way to feel the game. Stones with no liberties are taken, a stone may not be played with no liberties, you may not retake a ko at once, and two passes end the game. Scoring is Chinese area scoring: every stone plus every empty point you surround, with 6.5 points of komi for White. Dead stones are not marked, so capture them before you pass. The computer plays by Monte Carlo: it tries random games from its best candidate moves, counting the work in moves played, never in milliseconds, so it plays the same move on every machine. It is a friendly opponent on purpose, easy makes slips, medium and hard are steady but beatable. Ranked play is the daily set of three capture puzzles (take the marked stones in one, two and three moves, each checked by an exhaustive search) and the weekly game against the hard computer. Undo and hint cost points. Each run is stored as a list of moves and replayed on the server, the computer's replies included.
The Eracade workshop
Target scores
- 140
- 290
- 3140
- 4200
- 5260
- 6320
- 7380
- 8430
Each target is a step up. Reach the last one and you have outplayed the workshop.
In the Boards room
Board and tile games across a quiet table, one move at a time.
Your hands
Your best ten are kept in this browser with your three initials. Nothing is uploaded unless you submit a ranked hand, so clearing site data clears the list.
