Scoring

Go's rules are simple, but the moment you finish your first game two questions immediately come up: how do we know who won? and which stones are actually captured? This page walks through the counting process step by step, with worked examples.

If you're new to the rules, start with Go Basics first — this page assumes you already know how stones get captured and what makes a group alive.

A game ends when both players pass consecutively. Passing means "I don't see any move that gains me points." Once both players agree there's nothing useful left to play, the position is settled and you can count.

You can also end a game by resigning, in which case there's no counting — your opponent wins regardless of the position on the board.

Two scoring systems are in common use. They almost always pick the same winner — the strategic implications are identical — but the arithmetic looks slightly different.

• Japanese / Korean rules (territory scoring): count empty points you surround + opponent stones you've captured (prisoners) + komi.
• Chinese rules (area scoring): count empty points you surround + your own living stones on the board + komi.

GoInSente uses Japanese-style territory scoring in the in-browser AI game. The examples below all follow Japanese rules.

The first three examples use 6×6 boards to keep the scoring arithmetic small and the visual focus clear. The fourth puts everything together in a real 9×9 game.

Counting (ignore komi for these small-board examples — 6×6 has no standard komi):

• Black: 3 territory + 0 captures = 3 points
• White: 3 territory + 0 captures = 3 points
• Drawn at 3.

No stones on the board count for either player under Japanese rules — only empty points and prisoners. Under Chinese (area) rules, each side would also count their living stones, but the difference between the two scores would be the same, so the winner doesn't change.

A "dead stone" is a stone that's still on the board at the end of the game but cannot avoid capture if play continued. Both players recognize this and skip the formality of actually capturing it — but in Japanese scoring it still counts as a prisoner for the surrounding color, and the intersection it leaves behind becomes territory.

Same position as Example 1, except White invaded at B3 and got sealed in. The white stone has two liberties (B2 and B4), so it isn't already captured; but it can never make two eyes in a three-point pocket, so both players treat it as dead.

Counting:

• Black: 4 territory + 1 capture = 5 points — the {B2, B3, B4} pocket counts as 3 once the dead stone is removed, plus B6 and the prisoner.
• White: 3 territory = 3 points
• Black wins by 2.

Each dead stone is worth two points: one for the prisoner, and one for the now-empty intersection it leaves behind. That's the same result you'd get if Black actually played out the capture — the only thing dead-stone removal saves is the move it would take to fill the last liberty.

A dame is an empty intersection that touches both colors. Nobody surrounds it exclusively, so it scores zero for both sides.

Same partition as Example 1, but the boundary along the D column isn't fully filled in. Black has extended to D1–D2 and White to D5–D6, leaving D3 and D4 between the walls — those two points border both colors, so they're dame.

Counting:

• Black: 3 territory + 0 captures = 3 points
• White: 3 territory + 0 captures = 3 points
• Dame: 2 (D3, D4) — count zero for both sides.
• Drawn at 3.

In a real game both sides keep filling in dame until none remain (it costs nothing under Chinese area scoring, and at most an even exchange under Japanese). Where it does matter is the order: a "dame-sized" move that scores zero locally can still be sente — forcing your opponent to respond, which can save you a point elsewhere. Recognising those forcing dame is one of the most underrated endgame skills.

Reading the board left to right, bottom to top:

• Black's group occupies rows 2–5: a row-2 wall, a row-3 eye line (B3 was Black until White invaded it — see below), a row-4 wall, and three stones at A5/B5/C5 that extended the left side into the contact zone. Eyes at A3/B3/C3 (a three-point pocket once the dead stone is removed), E3, G3, and J3. Comfortably alive.
• Black's territory: the entire row 1 (9 points) plus those six row-3 eye points = 15 points.
• White's group is the mirror image in rows 5–8, with eyes at A7, C7, the {E7, F7, G7} pocket (three points after the dead stone is removed), and J7. Also alive.
• White's territory: all of row 9 (9 points) plus the six row-7 eye points = 15 points.
• Dead stones: the white invader at B3 (sealed in Black's three-point pocket) and the black invader at F7 (sealed in White's). One prisoner for each side.
• Dame: D5, E5, F5 — the three intersections in row 5 that neither side bothered to fill in.

Final score:

• Black: 15 territory + 1 capture = 16 points
• White: 15 territory + 1 capture + 7 komi = 23 points
• White wins by 7.

Black moves first and gets a slight built-in advantage. To balance that, White receives komi — bonus points added to White's final score before comparing totals.

Standard komi values:

The fractional half-point is purely a tiebreaker. With integer komi a 0-point game would be a draw ("jigo"); with 6.5 komi, every game has a clear winner.

For any finished game under Japanese rules:

1. Identify dead stones. Both players agree which on-board stones are functionally captured. Treat them as removed.
2. Count each player's territory. Empty points exclusively surrounded by your color, including any intersections vacated by dead-stone removal.
3. Add captures. Opponent stones removed during the game, plus the dead stones just identified.
4. Add komi to White.
5. Compare totals. Higher score wins; the difference is the margin.

black_score = black_territory + black_captures
white_score = white_territory + white_captures + komi
winner      = whoever's score is higher

No tricks, no special cases — and the same formula gives you the final score from a 9×9 hand of 30 moves all the way up to a 19×19 marathon.

Two passes will trigger the counted-score panel, and the board itself decorates every scored intersection — small black squares on Black's territory, small white squares on White's, and a hollow ring on each dame point. Compare those to your own count to calibrate.

For more on when the AI decides a position is settled enough to count, see Play vs AI. For broader endgame strategy, see Game Phases.