This is a game played on a GO board using GO pieces called stones. The link below will bring up a GO board, just click on the board to start a game against the computer. The object is to get 5 in a row before your opponent. When it's your turn just click where you want the next stone of your color placed. If you like the game and get fairly good against the computer, there are many sites where you can play against other players. I've never found a computer program that could consistently beat me at this game.

Anyway please give it a try and let me know what you think.

http://www.steffengerlach.de/gomoku/index.html

I've played several games on this site now and find they don't play by the same rules I originally learned to play by.

1. I always played where it was not legal to set up two open ended 3's at the same time. Because that made it to easy to win for the person with the first move. What was allowed was a 4 combined with an open ended 3.

2. Also 6 in a row was illegal. So you could use an opponents own pieces to prevent him from getting a 5 in a row. In this version getting 5 in a row anyway you can do it is legal.

Has anybody played yet? This is a fairly quick game, most will be under 5 minutes.

1. I always played where it was not legal to set up two open ended 3's at the same time. Because that made it to easy to win for the person with the first move. What was allowed was a 4 combined with an open ended 3.That rule is called san-san, "three-three," and it is fundamental to the game. Without it, the game would be trivial and pointless.

Go-moku was one of the first games to be solved by computer programming because it's so much simpler than chess or go, even checkers. If you've found some home-grown program that doesn't even know the rules, toss it. Google "gomoku" and you'll get twelve zillion websites for playing against the computer or against other humans... using the correct rules.
This is a fairly quick game, most will be under 5 minutes.Indeed. I've only played a couple of times, between go games because it uses the same equipment. But I've never seen a game last longer than a few minutes.

There's another game that was originally developed to use a go board and go stones, called Othello. It was quickly supplanted by a plastic set whose flat "stones" were white on one side and black on the other, to facilitate replacing black stones with white stones and vice versa during the course of play. Now it's become one of the many games that simply works better on a computer. It's usually called "Reversi" now. It's not trivial like gomoku. I spent a couple of years trying to program it and all I got was a program that could beat a beginner about twenty times, until he learned to play better.