Go on a 9×9 board: the stone you must not play
My first stone in Go went into the corner. The logic felt ironclad: the corner is mine, nobody pushes me out of it. Ten moves later the white group wrapped my corner in a ring, my stones had no empty points left, and the whole lot came off the board. The corner was a trap, not a fortress.
A game about air, not territory
Go on igrasu.ru is a 9×9 board, you play black against the AI. Stones go on intersections. A group lives while empty points — liberties — sit beside it. No liberties, the group is dead and removed.
Hence the beginner paradox: a stone is strong not where it stands but where it can retreat. A dense wall with no “eyes” — empty points inside — is just a big dead group removed in one motion. Scattered stones with air between them outlive a monolith.
Two bans that change everything
Suicide is banned: no stone on a point with no liberties unless the move captures something. And ko: you may not instantly return the position from a move ago. Because of ko the game cannot loop — you must play elsewhere, and that “elsewhere” often decides the outcome.
Start from the centre and the sides, not the corners. The corner will wait — air matters more.