Gomoku FAQ

Gomoku is a two-player strategy board game in which Black and White take turns placing stones on a 15×15 grid. The first player to get five stones in an unbroken line — horizontally, vertically, or diagonally — wins. It is also called connect 5, five in a row, gobang, and in Chinese wuziqi (五子棋). The name comes from Japanese: “go” means five and “moku” is a counter for pieces.

Yes. playgomoku.app is completely free and runs entirely in your browser. There is nothing to buy, download, or install, no account to create, and no video ads between games. Open the page, pick an opponent, and play.

Yes — choose 2 Players on the setup screen to play pass-and-play on one device. Black moves first and the turn indicator shows whose move it is. Online matchmaking against strangers is not offered; the game is fully client-side with no servers or accounts.

Wuziqi (五子棋) is the Chinese name and means “five-piece chess.” Gobang is an older English name, from the Japanese “goban” (Go board); the game was sold in Britain under that name from the late 19th century. Connect 5 and five in a row are descriptive names for the same game.

Five-in-a-row games on a Go board were played in Japan by at least the Edo period, and the game spread under the name gomokunarabe (“five in a row”). The modern professional variant, Renju, was named in 1899. The same game is played across China as wuziqi and reached Europe in the 1880s as gobang.

Start with an empty 15×15 board. Black places one stone on any intersection, then White does the same, and turns alternate. Stones never move and are never captured. Make lines of your colour while blocking your opponent’s. The first to complete five in a row wins; if the board fills up with no five, it is a draw.

On this site, yes. It uses freestyle rules, where five or more stones in a row wins. Some rule sets — “standard” gomoku and Black’s side in Renju — do not count an overline of six or more as a win, which is worth knowing if you play in tournaments.

Renju is the professional form of gomoku, named in 1899 in Japan. It is played on the same 15×15 board but restricts Black: Black may not make a double three, a double four, or an overline, and loses if forced into one. These rules, plus special opening procedures, offset Black’s first-move advantage. White has no restrictions.

No. Gomoku uses Go equipment — the board and black and white stones — but Go is a territory game with captures, while gomoku is a pure five-in-a-row race. Connect Four is a vertical game with gravity on a 7×6 grid that needs only four; in gomoku you can place a stone on any empty point of a much larger board.

Click or tap an empty intersection to place a stone. On the keyboard, focus the board and use the arrow keys to move the cursor and Enter or Space to place. U undoes, N starts a new game, and M toggles sound.

Yes. Moving first is a large advantage: in 1994 computer scientist Victor Allis proved that with perfect play Black can always force a win in freestyle gomoku on a 15×15 board. That is why tournament play uses Renju restrictions or swap openings. In casual play the advantage is real but far from decisive, and choosing White against the computer is a good way to practise defence.

Build toward a double threat. Block every open three as soon as it appears, keep your stones near the centre and connected, and look for a single move that creates a four and an open three at the same time — the computer can only block one. Undo lets you take a move back and try a different line.

An open three is three stones in a row with both ends empty, such as _ X X X _. If it is not blocked, the next stone makes an open four — four in a row with both ends free — and an open four cannot be stopped, because blocking one end leaves the other. That is why open threes must be answered immediately.

A four-three is one move that creates a four (which must be blocked at once) and an open three at the same time. Your opponent can only block one of them, so the other becomes a winning line. Setting up a four-three, or a double four, is how most gomoku games are won.

Your current streak counts consecutive wins against the computer. A loss resets it to zero, and so does starting a new game in the middle of one, which is recorded as a resignation. A draw leaves the streak unchanged. Your best streak is kept as a separate record.

Your record against the computer (wins, losses, draws, current and best streak, fastest win) and your two-player tally are saved locally in your browser, along with your sound setting and preferred mode and colour. Nothing is sent to a server and there is no account, so a different device, a new browser profile, or cleared site data starts fresh. A game in progress is not saved if you close the tab.

Yes. The board scales to fit your screen so the full 15×15 grid, the turn indicator, and the controls fit in portrait without scrolling. Tap an intersection to place a stone. Starting a new game is instant, with no page reload.

Yes. The board can be played entirely from the keyboard, every control has a label, and moves are announced to screen readers with their coordinates (columns A to O, rows 1 to 15). Animations are reduced when your system asks for reduced motion.

Open Stats from the chart icon above the board and choose Reset stats, then tap again to confirm. That clears your computer record, streaks, fastest win, and two-player tally on this browser. It cannot be undone.

The page needs a connection to load the first time. The game itself runs entirely in your browser with no server calls, so an already-open tab keeps working if the network drops, but there is no installable offline app.