On 20th October 2007 the BGA Council agreed as follows:
Council resolves to adopt AGA Rules, as specified at http://www.usgo.org/resources/downloads/completerules.pdf on 20th October, 2007, to be used at all tournaments run by the BGA (unless decided otherwise in specific cases) and as the recommended default set of rules for other tournaments in the UK. This will be the case until the 2008 AGM when Council intends to propose a motion approving the change. If this motion fails, the BGA will then use "Verbal Japanese Rules" with the procedure for resolving disputes being determined by individual Tournament Directors in consultation with the Referees, unless explicitly decided otherwise by the AGM.
The AGA Rules motion was passed at the AGM on 5th April 2008 and so AGA Rules were adopted for BGA use.
Tournament Directors do, of course, as before, have the freedom to depart from the default recommendations (including using a different rule set if they wish) as long as these are specified in the pre-tournament publicity. However, Council hopes that most tournaments will be run under AGA rules, with deviations restricted to more "normal" things like varying komi, so as to gain maximum experience.
We have produced a Rule Set Summary.
We have produced a Short Guide of how to play by AGA Rules.
There is also a BGA Interpretation of how some of the AGA Rules will be applied in British tournaments.
These are available as PDF format documents for tournament organisers to print out:
The following pages are based on, or copies of, the official AGA Pages:
Last updated: 2008-04-30.