Gomoku: Gomokunarabe and Renju join Go as Popular Board Games from Hokkaido to Okinawa

Like go itself, gomoku originated in China but became extremely popular in Japan. Many tourists in Japan will see at least one goban in their travels, and a few might even sit down for a game of go or gomoku. In Japanese, the game is more correctly referred to as gomokunarabe. However, one should expect to see the game under either name.

While go might be more widely known in the west, gomoku is a bit easier to play. As the translation "five in a row" would suggest, the object of the game is to connect a line of five pieces while preventing one's opponent from doing the same thing. Unlike regular go, players don't actually place the piece on the intersection. Instead, it fits inside of the individual squares that the 19 x 19 intersections make.

Most people play the game with a regular go set, or even a computer. However, paper and pencil versions are available. For that matter, some people probably pull out a notebook and make a grid on it whenever they're bored. It would certainly be a good way to pass the time when waiting for the train at Shibuya Station.

Interestingly enough, it enjoyed some popularity in nineteenth century Europe. British players called it Go Bang, which is probably a corruption of the Japanese word goban. Korean players use the term omok, which originated from the same word as the Japanese name. While it might sound rather simple, strategy and tactics are extremely important when playing a game of gomoku.

Moreover, it isn't so permissive as to allow players to simply make any combination that they would like. Standard gomoku games require players to connect exactly five stones, and disqualify rows of six or more. These are called overlines, and are permitted in free-style gomoku. Korean Omok is played on a 15 x 15 board, but the overline rules still apply.

Back in Japan, professional gomoku players have standardized the game called renju on a 15 x 15 grid goban. In this variant, the stones are actually played on the grid line intersections. Ruikou Kuroiwa, a journalist for the Yorozu chouhou newspaper, named the game renju on December 6, 1899. It adds some special conditions for the black stone player, which evens up the game between the black and white players. Renju has become something of an international phenomenon, and some of the more recent world championships have been held in Sweden, Estonia, Russia and the Czech Republic.