Rules of Go Used in Our Tournaments

The decision to adopt American Go Association (AGA) style rules was approved with no opposition by the Annual General Meeting held at Hastings on 05/04/2008.

The statement of the Go rules used in our tournaments is found in Rules of Play (PDF 430 kb). This document is inspired by the AGA's official statement of the rules (off-site PDF) and the our interpretation of those rules.

Tournament Directors do, of course, as before, have the freedom to depart from the default recommendations (including using a different rule set if they wish) as long as these are specified in the pre-tournament publicity. However, the Board hopes that most tournaments will be run under AGA-style rules, with deviations restricted to simple things like varying komi, so as to gain maximum experience.

Tournament organisers can get an easy to digest statement of the rules in the AGA Summary, and in AGA Summary (PDF 316 kb) to print out for display.

Players can get a crib sheet showing guidance in playing by AGA-style rules from the Short Guide, and again in Short Guide (PDF 215 kb) for a better print.

Our referees should refer to Rules of Play (PDF 430 kb) for the definitive statement of our tournament rules of play.

The following pages are based on, or copies of, the official AGA pages and are provided for historical interest:

• an introduction
• rules with commentary
• rules explanation
• shorter rules