The rules of Tibetan go follow Chinese rules with the following exceptions.

1. The board is 17x17 and play begins with six black and six white stones at fixed positions on the third line. White plays first.
2. There is one restriction on where to play. It is not permissible to play immediately on any point just vacated by a captured piece. This is an extension of the standard ko rule.
3. As in ordinary Chinese go, the winner is the one who has the bigger combination of stones on the board and empty points controlled. Captured stones are ignored once removed, and the final score is then usually calculated by subtracting this total from 144.5 (half 17x17). The result is measured in zi. (One zi is equivalent to two points if counting in Japanese style.)
4. But a player who controls all four corner points (the 1-1 points) gets a bonus of 20 zi, and if he also controls the centre point he gets a further bonus of 5 zi. Since there is no penalty for filling in one's own territory in Chinese counting, control here also means occupation.
5. There is no komi initially, but for the second and subsequent games the komi is the margin of victory in the previous game.

A rule reported by Shotwell that each move must apparently be very close to the previous move does not appear to exist here. (My hunch is that a rule like this exists for a Mongolian variation.)

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