About Gomoku Guide
Why This Site Exists
Gomoku Guide puts a playable five-in-a-row board beside practical explanations of rules, shapes, and opening decisions. A reader can learn a pattern, recreate its position, and check what the opponent can do next. The guides name their rule set so a casual browser example is not mistaken for a formal Renju tournament ruling.
We explain practical opening ideas, common patterns, and the difference between casual Gomoku and formal Renju. Tournament opening procedures can change, so players should use the current Renju International Federation rules for competition requirements.
Five-in-a-row has a long history across East Asia, though the available sources do not establish one precise invention date. This site treats that heritage as a reason to explain things properly: what the rules actually are, why formal Renju added restrictions that casual play skips, and how the game connects to the broader family of connection games (Go, Pente, Connect Four) without pretending they are interchangeable.
Who Is Behind Gomoku Guide
Gomoku Guide is an independent project maintained by its developer. It combines a playable five-in-a-row board with explanations of this site's rules and practical study material. The goal is to help readers check ideas on a board rather than memorize unsupported claims.
The guides distinguish this site's casual exact-five rules from formal Renju. Where a page discusses formal Renju, it links to the relevant RIF rules. If you spot an error, the contact page is open.
The site is not affiliated with the Renju International Federation, Apple, GamePigeon, Supabase, or any other service mentioned here. Those are cited as sources or referenced as platforms, not as partners.
How We Keep Guides Accurate
Gomoku Guide is an educational site, not a tournament authority. We distinguish the casual exact-five rules used by this site, free-style house rules, and formal Renju competition rules. Rules, historical claims, and computer-science topics are reviewed against primary material where it is available. Pages with technical or historical claims show a review date and link to sources.
The local game offers Easy, Medium, and Hard practice settings. Its AI uses minimax search with alpha-beta pruning and configured search depths of one, two, and three plies respectively. These settings describe the implementation, not a competitive rating or proof that a line is forced. The advanced study guide explains how to check a position beyond what a shallow practice opponent can establish.
Found an error? Send the page URL, the claim, and a reliable source through our contact page. We review corrections and update pages when the evidence supports a change.
What You Will Not Find Here
No public leaderboard. No anonymous matchmaking. No chat, no user accounts, no social graph. The online room is a private link — you create it, you share it, you play it. There is no reason to build a login system for a two-player board game, and we are not going to add one to collect email addresses or serve a personalized ad feed.
The site uses Google Analytics and, after analytics consent, Microsoft Clarity. It has submitted an application to Google AdSense but does not currently display approved ads. These services and the online room provider are described in the privacy policy.
We focus on the browser game available here and the rules you can verify on its board, rather than ranking third-party apps whose features and listings change over time.
What We Believe About Gomoku
A useful Gomoku guide should distinguish the game a visitor can play here from other five-in-a-row traditions. The same board can support different overline, opening, and forbidden-move rules. A practical explanation should state those differences, show the relevant stones, and make it possible to reproduce an example rather than ask the reader to trust a tactic label alone.
This site compares its exact-five rules with free-style play and formal Renju. It also explains how Gomoku differs from games such as Go and Connect Four without treating them as identical. The local board works without a login, and the strategy pages use numbered diagrams when a position would be difficult to follow from prose alone.
The game is known through related traditions in China, Japan, and Korea. Names such as Wuziqi, Gomoku, and Omok describe forms of five-in-a-row, but their exact historical relationship and rule details should not be assumed from the names alone. Our history page separates documented rule texts from early-origin claims that lack a precise source.
How the Site Is Built
The pages are built with Astro and served as static HTML. Local games run in the browser. Private online rooms use Supabase Realtime to exchange moves and presence between connected browsers; the site does not require player accounts or store a match history.
The strategy and rules content is maintained alongside the game. We check formal rule claims against the RIF rules and historical claims against primary sources before publication. If a claim cannot be sourced, we say so explicitly rather than presenting it as fact.
The site is free to use. There is no premium tier, no paywalled content, and no "pro" features locked behind a subscription. Everything on this site is available to everyone who can open a browser.
What We're Not
We're not a gaming portal with 500 games. We don't have public leaderboards, random matchmaking, or chat. We do offer local play and private friend rooms. This is a focused resource: one game, covered thoroughly. If you want to learn why the center is a practical casual opening, what VCF means, or how Renju's double-three rule changes the game — you're in the right place. If you want to play battle royale gomoku with strangers, not yet.
Content Sourcing Policy
The opening guide links to the source used for its named three-stone patterns, and pages that discuss formal Renju refer readers to the published rule text. Practice continuations are identified as constructed examples under this site's casual rules. The glossary and history page each list their specific sources.
If you find a strategy claim that conflicts with another source, first compare the rule sets and complete positions. Formal Renju, free-style play, and this site's exact-five game can produce different legal moves and outcomes. If the same rule set and position still disagree, send the example through the contact page so the explanation can be corrected.
Contact
Found a bug? Have a strategy question? Want to suggest a topic for the blog? Reach us at our contact page.