Figure 1 illustrates a game of Gonnect won by Black. An unbroken chain of adjacent black stones spans the board from A7 on the left side to N3 on the right side. The run of black stones towards the top of the board is not a winning connection as the pieces at D10 and E9 are diagonal to each other, not adjacent, and therefore not connected.

Rules of Gonnect
Rules in common with Go

• Players take turns placing a stone of their color on an empty point on the board.
• Stones of the same color that are adjacent along a line of the board (not diagonally) are connected. A chain (known as a group in Go) consists of one or more stones of the same color such that any stone in the group can be reached from any other through a series of connected pairs of stones in the chain.
• A stone has a liberty if it is adjacent to an empty point. A chain has a liberty provided one of its members does. Chains of stones with no liberties are captured and removed from the board.
• A stone cannot be played such that it creates a chain of friendly stones without liberties, unless that move performs a capture that creates a liberty. In other words, suicide is forbidden.
• A player cannot make a move that would recreate the same board position as after his previous move. (This is the ko rule.)

Rules specific to Gonnect

• Players may not pass.
• The swap option (also know as the pie rule) is in use: the second player may elect to swap colors in lieu of his first move.
• A player wins if he connects either the top and bottom or the left and right edges of the board with a chain of stones of his color; also, a player wins if his opponent has no valid move.

Figure 2 demonstrates the concept of liberty with respect to capturing. White stone a has one remaining liberty. Black's b removes this last remaining liberty. The white stone is captured and removed form the board. Unlike Go the number of captured pieces has no bearing on the game's result. It is sometimes advantageous to offer sacrificial stones for capture.

Figure 3 illustrates a consequence of the "no suicide" rule. The black chain has two eyes, at p and q. Even though the group is surrounded, it is safe as it stands and is called alive. White is not allowed to play in either eye due to the "no suicide" rule since stones played at p or q would have no liberties. White cannot play both p and q simultaneously, so the Black chain cannot be captured.
           Black can legally play at p or q, but this would be a bad move as it would reduce his safe two-eye formation to a vulnerable single eye, which White could then capture next turn. However, Black may be forced to make such a move in the later stages of the game, as we shall soon see, because passing is not an option.

As in Go, there are no diagonal mirror tactics to achieve draws. Unlike Hex it is possible to construct contrived board situations in which both players have winning connections. This cannot occur during actual play as it is not possible for either player to achieve one of the winning conditions with a move that also gives his opponent a win. One player must win!
          One of the attractive features of Gonnect is that it actually simplifies Go to produce what we think is a very intuitive and interesting game. Go is simplified by:

1. Removing the rule that players may pass;
2. Replacing Go's winning condition with a much simpler one that does not involve scoring; and
3. Using the swap option, which is simpler than the komi handicapping system used in Go.

The Invention of Gonnect
Gonnect was invented on July 18, 2000 by Joćo Neto, a 30-year-old professor of Computer Science at Sao Paulo, Brazil, who is currently finishing his Ph.D. on Artificial Neural Nets. His main hobby is designing and playing abstract games.
          Gonnect occurred to Joćo in a flash. He was working on his "Variations on Go" website, pondering the many ways the rules of Go could be remodeled, when the intriguing idea occurred to him to change the objective of Go to connection of opposite sides of the board. Sample games revealed that the game suffered from deadlocks caused by live groups with two-eye structures. A rule was developed specifically to combat this problem, but was soon abandoned as being too artificial and not in keeping with the feel of the game.
          After some discussion with other gamers, Joćo realized that the "no pass" rule solved the deadlock problem beautifully. Gonnect had been discovered: Joćo sees himself as the discoverer, not the inventor, of the simple combination of rules that make up the game.
          The only other modifications to the existing Go rules were discarding the komi handicapping system and reducing the size of the standard board from 19x19 to 13x13. This reflects the fact that a game of Gonnect involves several phases of play and will usually take considerably longer than a game of Go on an equivalently sized board. Boards smaller than 13x13 are somewhat claustrophobic and unduly emphasize the connection aspect of the game, whereas larger boards lead to marathon games with elusive conclusions in which the territorial feature dominates. To put this board size into perspective, the 13x13 board contains 644 connections while the standard 11x11 Hex board contains 640 connections.

Deadlock Resolution
Local battles on the Gonnect board may deadlock where four stones of alternating colors meet at a vertex, as shown in Figure 4. Deadlocks cannot occur on the hexagonal grid where at most three cells meet at each vertex, but the possibility of deadlock severely limits the playability of Hex-like connection games on the square grid.

However, Gonnect has a very elegant mechanism for resolving deadlocks: due to the "no pass" rule, at least one of the deadlocked chains will be captured at a later stage of the game, freeing up space for the battle to continue. This deadlock resolution is central to Gonnect's unique character and is demonstrated in Figure 5, where Black must lose no matter whose turn it is.
          If it is Black's turn to play, there are no legal moves due to the "no suicide" rule. Black must therefore forfeit the game.
          If it is White's turn, then he should play in one of Black's eyes at B5 or E2 to capture the chain and establish an unbeatable position. Even though the capture opens up space on the board, Black cannot stop White from eventually connecting. Proof of this is left as an exercise for the reader.

The "no pass" rule results in a typical game of Gonnect consisting of three distinct phases:

1. The race stage,
2. The eye-making stage, and
3. The eye-filling stage.

Opening and Swapping
Gonnect is more like Hex than Go in the opening stages. The first player in Gonnect has a huge (winning) advantage if allowed an unconstrained first move, and clearly defined lines of local attack develop right from the start. Go tends to unfold more subtly in the opening stages, with players pushing to establish global territory.
          The swap option is a technique widely used in Hex and other games of this nature to neutralize the advantage of playing first. It ensures that the first player does not make an overly strong opening move.
          Let's assume that Black starts. As in Hex, the strongest opening move is the central point G7. This strong opening should obviously be swapped by the second player. In our experience, C11 (or any of its reflections C3, L3 or L11) is the optimal opening as it is the strongest opening that the opponent will have doubts about swapping. It is always an advantage to keep the first move, as race to connection is an important aspect of Gonnect.

Notice that the opening plays shown in Figure 7 all lie along the diagonal. The diagonals take on extra importance because connection to all sides is equally important. C11 appears to be the balance point along the diagonal; B12 is too close to the edge and in danger of being trapped and captured (with White playing 2 C11 himself), while D10 is a bit too far in and gives White some latitude to connect to either edge.
          White's best reply to 1 C11 is also along the diagonal. Moves F8 or G7 both establish a base in the center and put pressure on 1 C11. They appear to be equally good. E9 is a little too close to the opening piece and also a bit too far away from the center to be safe.

Gonnect and Go
Gonnect and Go, being played on the same grid and with similar rules, must necessarily share some basic strategies. In this section we present a few of the more relevant fundamental Go strategies. Obviously we do not have space to explore Go in any depth, but the reader may consult any Go reference book.
          The leftmost diagram of Figure 8 shows a basic blocking technique. If White wishes to block the black stone from connecting to the right, move x is too close and will not impede it for long. Moves b are suitable for blocking progress along the upper and lower right diagonals, while moves labeled c are suitable for blocking horizontally to the right.

The middle diagram of Figure 8 shows a white stone trapped by two phalanxes of Black stones. If Black plays y then the white stone is as good as lost. White can play at y to keep this stone alive.
          The rightmost diagram of Figure 8 shows a fork situation. If Black plays at z, then both white stones are reduced to a single liberty, and at least one white stone must die.
          Ladders are another case where Go and Gonnect strategy complement each other. For instance, Figure 9 shows a black stone x with only one liberty left. Black is forced to play move 1 to keep the stone alive. However, White is able to play a series of forcing moves 2, 4, 6, 8 etc. that maintain this structure until Black's chain (1) is driven into an edge and captured, (2) encounters a previously placed white stone and is captured, or (3) encounters a previously placed black stone (the ladder breaker) and escapes.

Ladders and ladder breakers play a large part in Gonnect as they define lines of connection and lines of defense.
          Figure 10 shows the relative strengths of various connective formations on the square grid. This aspect is highly relevant to Gonnect, where connection and connective potential is of the utmost importance. Connection a is unbreakable (expect for capture) but slow to develop. Connection b is almost as safe as a and provides greater diagonal or sideways coverage but no end-to-end advantage in distance. Connection c is weaker but offers the greatest distance advantage, while connection d is strong and fast. Connection e is strong and good for movement along an axis. Connection f is reasonably strong but slow to develop. In general, the more distance a connection has to cover, the weaker it is.

Loose diagonal connections such as c, which Go players may know as keima, or knight's extensions, will delay the final orthogonal connections. Orthogonal connections might be even more valuable than they are in Go.

Gonnect and Hex
Apart from the Hex-like winning condition that dramatically biases the nature of the game towards connectivity, Hex and Gonnect do not otherwise have a great deal in common. This is largely due to the dynamic piece activity arising from capture and the nature of the square grid itself.

Consider the situation shown in Figure 11. Black requires three moves to reduce the white stone to a single liberty on the square grid. The diagram on the right shows an analogous case on the hexagonal grid. Although the white stone still has two remaining liberties and is not in danger of capture next turn, it has effectively been removed from the game -- Black would waste two moves attempting to capture it.
           Go's elimination of liberties is therefore not a suitable criterion for capture on the hexagonal grid. Even stones surrounded by three enemy stones are rendered relatively useless on the hexagonal grid and require three extra moves for capture. This problem could be addressed by devising more complicated and less intuitive capturing rules (for instance, pieces with less than three liberties are captured), but the elegance of the final game is compromised.

Another point where Hex and Gonnect differ substantially is in the formation of bridges, or pairs of disjoint stones that share two common adjacent empty points, as shown in Figure 12. The square bridge, although equally secure as the hexagonal bridge, does not actually gain more space than an adjacent move except in the diagonal direction and is in general less aggressive. A more detailed comparison of play between the square and hexagonal grids is given in Hex Strategy: Making the Right Connections.
          Hex players will be comfortable with the concept of connecting opposite edges, and should be intrigued by the freedom allowed in connecting either top-bottom or left-right. Even though globally deadlocked games are not possible in Hex, players will also be familiar with the concept of blocking dangerous connections by means of local deadlocks.

Basic Strategy Specific To Gonnect
Gonnect looks similar to Go on a superficial level, but there are substantial differences between the two games:

1. The emphasis is on connecting, not surrounding.
2. Capturing is not always advantageous.
3. The size of territory owned by each player is irrelevant, except for the number of eyes it allows.

There are three basic ways to win a game of Gonnect:

1. Race to connect,
2. Capture to achieve connection, and
3. Deadlock resolution.

1. Improves the player's connection,
2. Interferes with the opponent's connection, and
3. Gains territory for creating eyes.

Although experienced Go players will have a head start in Gonnect due to the basic tactical similarities between the two games, there are also traps they must beware of. A common mistake made by Go players is to waste moves capturing an army of pieces that gains (possibly substantial) territory but does not improve their connection, allowing the opponent to play around the periphery of the battle to achieve a superior result from the conflict. Conversely, if a player may connect through an unresolved region to win, then any capture of his stones in that region is bad, much worse than a capture in Go. Not only is a potential connection removed, but the opponent consolidates his blocking connection.
          Suicidal moves are often acceptable as defensive blocking moves. For instance, Figure 14 shows a case where Black must insert a stone into White's structure in order to delay the connection if Black is to win. White is four moves from a winning connection, while Black is five moves from a winning connection, so Black looks likely to lose the race even though it is his turn to play.
          However, delaying move C5 is a killer move that wins the game for Black. White can easily capture C5, but in doing so will waste valuable moves, while Black completes a connection up the right side of the board. In fact, White must remove C5 to complete a White connection, so White will lose. If a player knows that his connection is slower than his opponent's, he must create delays by placing defensive blocking stones.
          One of the joys of Gonnect is that pieces may be happily sacrificed in some circumstances. If the sacrificed pieces are irrelevant to the central connection, then the opponent will waste at least one move performing the capture.

Conclusion
Gonnect simplifies the Go rules and winning condition to achieve a game with more tangible goals, great scope for attack, and a progression of distinct phases of play. It enhances the style of Hex-like connection games with the dynamic element of capturing, and the freedom to connect either top-bottom or left-right. We cannot assert that Gonnect is superior to either of these great games, but it does combine some of the best elements from both to produce a rich game with unique and deep strategies that is most enjoyable to play and has great scope for further study.

References
Browne, C. (2000) Hex Strategy: Making the Right Connections, A K Peters, Massachusetts.
Neto, J. (2000) "Variations on Go," http://sites.uol.com.br/vascog/gv/gonnect.htm.
Rognlie, R. (2000) "Help for Gonnect," http://www.gamerz.net/~pbmserv/gonnect.html.