AtariGo for Palm by Tapani Raiko

AtariGo (v1.2, 33 kb) is a public domain game for PalmOS.
Monochrome or 8-bit colours. No warranty. Play against your Palm!
Warnings: Please remove an older version before updating. Highest level might think quite long.

What is AtariGo?

AtariGo is also known as the capture game -variant of the ancient oriental game of Go.
Do you know Go?
Yes The one who makes the first capture wins. The game starts on a 10 by 10 board with a crosscut in the middle. No passing.
No Try it as a soft introduction to Go or as a nice boardgame as itself. You can check the rules below.
The beginning of a game.
(colour version)
A finished game.
(monochrome version)

Rules

The players alternately place stones of their own colour to empty points on the board. Black is first. Once a stone is on the board, it is never moved or removed. The first player to surround some opponent stones wins. The surrounding is clarified below.
Stones of the same colour that touch each other form worms. Top left corner shows two black worms; one with three stones and the other with just one.
A worm is surrounded when it does not touch an empty point. The black string in the top right corner is surrounded by six white stones and the one in bottom right corner is surrounded by just two stones.
If black plays to the blue point, he makes a suicide and loses the game. On the other hand, if he first plays to the red point and later to the blue point, he wins. (even with his own stone surrounded!)
Neither player wants to play in the bottom left corner, since the other player can win by playing to the other point. The white worm is therefore safe as long as there is room to play elsewhere on the board.

Version History

Version Release date Comments
v1.2
May 24, 2002 Speedup in AI, added levels 3 and 4, minor change in menu.
v1.1
May 5, 2002 Colour version added, bugfix in AI.
v1.0
Apr 26, 2002 First release, monochrome, two playing levels.

Links

Send comments to: atarigo@myrealbox.com
Homepage of AtariGo (this page)
AtariGo at Freewarepalm with a small review of v1.0
British Go Association Software Catalogue