Go is the most played game in the world – though probably because it’s Chinese… The full board is 29×29 and looks like this:

The black and white stones are placed on the intersections. The object is to surround as many intersections as possible while keeping your stones alive.If a stone is surrounded by stones of an opposite color(meaning all places connected to it in a line are dominated by the opponent’s stones)the stone is “choked”(because it has no breathing space) and so is removed from the board to separate pile until the end of the game.

Rating

In Go, if you will be playing  on line or professional you will receive a rating depending on the games you have won. Everyone starts out with the rating of 30 kyu, as soon as they win 3 games in a row they go down to 29 kyu and so on. Depending on your rating, you might receive handicapped stones – stones that are on the board in the start of the game,  and help to balance the game if you are playing a more experienced player. For example:Player A has a rating of 14 kyu while player B has a rating of 18 kyu. Player B will be black(as black starts first) and will have a 4 stone advantage(they must be put in the larger dots on the board)

Wining and counting points:

When the game has been finished(when borders are drawn on the board to signify territory and neutral spots have been filled up)A player can pass. If he doesn’t, then the only movement he can do will probably be putting a stone inside his own territory, which will take points off.A finished game looks something like this:as you see there are kind of borders around territory. Now the pieces which don’t have a chance to escape are 

taken off the board as prisoners. White takes the black prisoners he caught and puts them in blacks territory making it smaller, and black does the opposite. The count intersections – each intersection worth one point. The player who has the most points wins, of course.

Sites to see:

http://www.samarkand.net/Academy/learn_go/overview.html - This is a good site to learn how to play

Dragongoserver.net – a way to play go slowly – it works like email.

kgsgo.com – an excellent site for live playing.

You can also google it to find more results – these are the ones I enjoy. Have fun!