Gomoku
Two colours, one grid, five in a row. The rules fit in a sentence; the tactics do not. Best entry point if you have never touched a Chinese board game.
How to Play
YiBoard has six games. Each card below links to the rules and a live board you can play instantly.
Six Games
Xiangqi
A river cuts the board in half. Cannons only capture by jumping over a screen. The two generals may never look at each other down an open file.
Go
You surround territory instead of capturing a king. Still played under essentially the same rules it had two millennia ago.
Reversi
Flip the board in your favour. A handful of stones can swing the whole game — easy to learn, brutal to master.
Chess
The western classic, fully playable: castling, en passant and promotion, against a sharp alpha-beta engine. One board, infinite lines.
Tsumego
Go life-and-death puzzles. One correct move captures the group — train the reading that wins real games.
Gomoku Rules in Detail
Black plays first. Players alternate, one stone per turn.
Stones go on the intersections of the grid, not inside the squares.
A stone never moves and is never captured once placed.
The first player to line up five stones of their colour — horizontally, vertically or diagonally — wins immediately.
If the board fills with no five in a row, the game is a draw. In practice this almost never happens.
Three things that will make you better today
Build two threats at once
A single open three can be blocked. Two open threes that share a stone cannot — your opponent only gets one move. Almost every game is decided by the first double threat.
Count the open ends, not the stones
Three stones with both ends free is far stronger than four stones walled off at one end. Learn to see the gaps before you see the line.
Block early, not politely
Beginners answer an open three. Stronger players answer an open two when it points at a strong direction. If you are always reacting, you have already lost the initiative.
Reading the notation
Columns run A to O from the left; rows run 1 to 15 from the bottom. The centre point is H8. We use this in shared games and in your history.
A1 · H8 · O15
Go deeper
Gomoku FAQ
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