How to Play Gomoku: Rules, Board and Winning Explained
Gomoku takes about five minutes to learn. This guide covers everything you need for your first game — the board, the rules, the winning condition, and the one rule difference that separates casual gomoku from the competitive version, renju.
The board and the pieces
A standard gomoku board is 15 × 15: fifteen lines in each direction, which makes 225 playable points. Stones are placed on the intersections of the lines, the way stones are placed in go — not inside the squares, the way chess pieces stand on a checkerboard.
Each player has an unlimited supply of stones, one colour each. Thirteen-by-thirteen and nineteen-by-nineteen boards are also used, but 15 × 15 is the standard for competition and for this site.
The rules in five lines
- Black moves first. Black places one stone on any empty point.
- Players alternate. White answers with one stone, then black, and so on.
- Stones never move. Nothing is captured, nothing is removed. The board fills up.
- Five in a row wins. The first player to make an unbroken line of five stones — horizontal, vertical or diagonal — wins immediately.
- No five, no winner. If the board fills completely with no five-in-a-row, the game is a draw. In practice this almost never happens.
Winning condition and edge cases
In casual (“free-style”) gomoku a line of five or more stones counts as a win — six in a row, or an “overline”, is still a win. Under renju rules the situation is different: black may not make an overline at all, and black must win with exactly five. White, in renju, wins with five or more. The board on this site defaults to free-style gomoku, so a line of five or longer wins; switch the Rules menu to renju if you want the restrictions enforced.
A five that runs off the edge of the board still counts, as long as it is five stones in an unbroken line. Stones do not wrap around the board.
Free-style gomoku vs renju
Free-style gomoku is the game as most people know it: any five wins, and both players play by the same rules. Renju is the competitive form, developed in Japan, in which black — the player with the first-move advantage — is forbidden from making certain strong shapes. The short version:
| Rule | Free-style gomoku | Renju |
|---|---|---|
| Five or more wins | Yes | White: yes. Black: must be exactly five |
| Forbidden moves for black | None | Overline, double four, double three |
| Forbidden moves for white | None | None |
| Typical use | Casual play, online games | Competition, world championships |
For the full explanation of the forbidden shapes, see the renju rules guide.
Rules at a glance
| Board size | 15 × 15 points (13 × 13 and 19 × 19 variants exist) |
|---|---|
| Stones per turn | One |
| First player | Black |
| Winning line | Five stones in a row, any of four directions |
| Captures | None — stones stay on the board |
| Draw | Only if the board fills without a five |
Practise the rules
Reading rules is not the same as seeing them. Open the free gomoku board, pick Easy, and play three games. You will learn more from one lost game than from three paragraphs — especially if you lose to a diagonal you did not see.
Last updated: November 2026