The Rules
The rules of 9 × 9 Go are Go rules applied to the 9 × 9 board. The board is made of hard material—preferably a square thick yellow wooden sheet. The surface of the board is marked with solid black lines: nine horizontally by nine vertically, to create 81 intersections (empty points), where each player is allowed to make a move. The board represents the no-man land, where the two countries (Black and White) will try to convert the points on the land into their own territories, by surrronding more points than the enemy, by which their soldiers (black and white stones) may kill or get killed by the enemy (the opponent), intentionally or unintentionally, foreseen or unforeseen, sucessfully or unsuccessfully, worth doing or needless to do, depending on their empirical and analytic knowledge of strategy and tactics they have learned, tested, and hold.
In zero-komi game, the weaker player takes black stones and always makes the first move, by placing one black stone on any point on the board he thinks the best location. If Black is much weaker, he may be allowed to have 2 to 5 black stones (handicape stones) in place at the outset of the game. The locatons for the handicape stones are marked with star points (Dia. 1). Then, White and Black alternate.
Both players must not make illegal moves, and should avoid bad ones. In principle, they should try to make the best move every turn. This principle is far beyond Go rules and the hardest part in Go, which may take decades to learn and thousands of years (or millions of training steps) to master.
Knowing Go rules is not enough to get strong at Go but it is an essential step. All top players are learners, but not all learners are top players. The best way to know Go rules is to play your first 50 games on GoQuest 9 × 9 Go server or at home against standard Go bots, such as IgoWin and Crazy Stones. To know the principles of 9 × 9 Go, however, you need a better Go playing and teaching program, such as A Master of Go. You need to think again, to really understand the nature of the game, to know what you want and how to get it in the right and most efficient way.