The 9x9 Go Board: Starting Go Small

A standard go board has 19 lines in each direction, giving 361 points where stones can be placed. A 9x9 board has 9 lines each way and 81 points. A 13x13 board has 169. So a 9x9 board is a little smaller than a quarter of a 19x19 one.

The rules stay the same whatever the size of the board. Capturing, illegal points, ko, how the game ends and how to count are as I described in Go Rules for Beginners. This post is about starting go on a small board.

9x9 is a common board for beginners

On its beginners’ page (in Japanese), the Nihon Ki-in, Japan’s go association, presents the 9x9 board as suited to beginners and novices. The flyer for a beginners’ course it ran in 2016 also said that the first half used a 7x7 board, smaller than a normal one, with the aim of getting students to the point of playing on 19x19. Start on a small board and gradually go bigger: that is one well-trodden way of learning go.

Why start on 9x9

From here on this is my own view. I think a 9x9 board has three advantages.

The first is that games are short. With only 81 points, the board fills up quickly and you can play right to the end. Finishing a game on 19x19 takes a beginner a lot of time and concentration. On 9x9 you can play several games in one sitting.

The second is that you can see the whole board. On 19x19, just keeping track of where your stones are and which area is yours takes effort. On 9x9 you can see at a glance what is happening everywhere.

The third is that capturing and life and death come up right away. The board is small, so stones run into each other from the opening. You get to go through the most basic questions of go again and again: which stones are about to be captured, and how to keep yours from being taken.

I think go is a game where the ending and the counting are hard to follow until you are used to them. Because games on 9x9 are short, you go through the end of the game and the count many times, and I believe that gets you past this hurdle sooner.

Komi on 9x9

Black moves first and has the advantage, so in even games White receives komi. In the Nihon Ki-in’s 19x19 tournaments it is 6.5 points.

Komi on 9x9 can differ between events and rule sets. One useful source is a 2009 research report published by the Information Processing Society of Japan, “Changes in the opening moves of Go played on the 9x9 board by professional Go players (no.1)” by Masahito Kamada. It looks at 846 games between professionals on 9x9 from 1968 to January 2009, and reports that the first moves changed around the time komi went from 5.5 to 6.5. I take this to mean that on 9x9 a single point carries so much weight that the komi value even changes how the opening is played.

Handicap games

When the players differ in strength, the weaker player takes Black and places stones on the board before the game starts. The handicap stones are placed using the star points as a guide. On a 9x9 board the star points are usually the four 3-3 points in the corners and the centre point, tengen. In a handicap game Black is treated as having moved first by placing the stones, so White plays first, and usually there is no komi.

What 9x9 teaches, and what it doesn’t

On 9x9 I think you learn capturing, life and death, how to surround and count territory, and the small boundary fights of the endgame. These are the foundations of go.

Some things are harder to learn, though. The opening on 19x19 involves fuseki, deciding where on a wide board to play first, and joseki, established sequences in the corners. The 9x9 board is too narrow for 19x19 fuseki and joseki to appear in the same form. I also think the feel for the balance of the whole board, what players call a sense of the whole game, is hard to develop on 9x9 alone.

When to move up to 13x13 or 19x19

I don’t think there is a fixed rule for when to move to a bigger board. My guide would be the point where you can play to the end by yourself and count the result on your own. From there, I think it is good to get used to a wider opening on 13x13, then move to 19x19. There is no need to give up 9x9. Even after moving up, quick games on 9x9 are good practice for life and death.

Go in Mindsports is played on 9x9

StudyX Mindsports is an app with 12 strategy games, including go. Go is played on a 9x9 board. In even games the komi is 6.5, and counting follows Japanese rules. When two people play on one device, they can choose a handicap of 2 to 9 stones. In handicap games White plays first and there is no komi.

The go beginner lessons teach the rules through tap-to-answer quizzes and then let you practise in real game positions. The lessons are available in 15 languages. After the lessons, you can play the CPU from Lv.1 to Lv.50. It goes up one level when you win and down one when you lose, so the opponent adjusts to your results without you choosing a strength. After a game you can step through it with Review, and if you close the app in the middle of a CPU game, you can continue it later.

The games and beginner lessons are free, with ads. Each game’s first advanced lesson is free too, and a one-time purchase opens the rest and removes the ads. How go differs from shogi and chess is in Shogi, Go and Chess: The Differences, and how to use Mindsports is in Getting Started with Mindsports.