Chess and Go

I posted this in another thread, but I got to thinking about it and decided that maybe it would be a good thread of its own.  This was my reply when another poster extolled the virtues of Go and how it is superior to Chess:

Yeah... Go is definitely a great game (and arguably the greatest)... but it's not Chess.

I dove way into the Go world for a while, got kinda good at it... but I really missed the dynamic tactical play of Chess! The pins, discovered checks, long combinations, intensive calculations in a difficult position.

Maybe my "Western mind" is more attuned to Chess, I don't know. What I'm certain of is that I'm a life-long Chess addict, and although Go will continue to have a place in my life and be of interest to me, it just isn't a replacement.  In fact, in many ways Go even seems inferior to me.

Thoughts?

I believe both games are great. I am 1700elo in chess and 6k in go. Equally love both games.

Go is definitely more philosophical, since it is more about "feel" of a position, balance and judgement.

Chess, on the other hand, as you pointed, is much more dynamic, aggressive and passionate. 

Chess is war. Chess is passion. Chess is fire. Do or die. All in!

Go is peace. Go is wisdom. Go is water. 

Regards

I don't play Go, but my impression so far is that Go is like the chess endgame with only soldiers & king. Maybe I should play Go to get better at endgame...

Interesting posts. Pattern recognition (shapes) in go are very important, I agree game tree complexity makes no difference. There are many moves in go (and chess) that strong players would never, ever, ever consider even for a moment

One thing I see people bring up sometimes is the range of ratings (go vs chess) but in go there are no draws. If you play the tiniest fraction better you will win i.e. in chess 10 players may have the same rating when in go they would be spread out. In chess to win you have to outplay your opponent by a large (large for professionals, strong amateurs) margin... which (IMO) is a point against chess heh, but I prefer it.

Go is about territory and pattern recognition.  Assuming no handicap, Black goes first, and the one thing I do remember is that White should go a "Knight's Move" away from Black.

The moves made are not on the squares like they are in chess, they are at the intersection points of the lines, or, in essence, the corner of each square.  So if you used the notation on the chess board, and Black's first move was to put a stone at the corner where e4, d4, e5, and d5 all meet, White should go a "Knight's move" from there, or, for example, on the point that the squares c2, d2, c3, and d3 meet.

Of course, Go isn't played on an 8x8 board, it's 19x19 instead.

Oh, and if you threaten to capture pieces via completely surrounding his pieces in one area with one move, unlike chess where you say "Check", in Go, it's "Atari" (like the old video game system from the early 80s).

Also, the goal is to create a pair of "eyes", which makes that area totally impossible to capture.  "Eyes" are where you surround 2 squares via occupancy of the points above, below, left, and right of those points, and connect the two diamonds.  For example, if you labeled the points A thru S and 1 thru 19, a case of having a pair of "eyes" would be if Black (or White) had stones on the following squares:

C7 - D6 - D8 - E7 - F7 - G7 - H6 - H8 - I7.  It would be physically impossible to remove this.  Build space off of this, and that space can't be captured ever either!

I have to admit I liked that one :)

"If you play the tiniest fraction better you will win i.e. in chess 10 players may have the same rating when in go they would be spread out."

Ah, I didn't know that (shows what I don't know about Go). That does seem like a really nice perk that we wish chess would have.

To clarify, I prefer chess... I don't prefer needing to outplay by a lot!

A lot of biased thoughts a read. Please do not simplify the game of Go to pure pattern recognition. It's a lot more complex then that. Try to play it and understand why you are getting crashed before reducing the game to pattern recognition. I could see Go players arguing that chess is the meter of studying the opening and tactics recognition, but we know it is much much more complex. 

I can agree that in go all pieces have the same function, which can be considered as attribute of simplicity. But I play Chess and Go, and was not able to advance in Go anywhere further than in chess (in my opinion). And the stronger the opponent I get, the more I understand how little I understand about the game. Same with chess. 

Point is: do not judge what you don't understand. Chess and Go are two most intelligent games out there and no one is to judge which one is more difficult, unless you play both and mastered the one, while failing to advance in another. Personally, I have not come across such people.

Regards

It's maybe semantics but personally I would say "a lot" is overstating it. After all, sometimes a few subtle mistakes can cost you the game if exploited well. Maybe at IM level plus, but even then "a lot" seems pretty strong. So any time a player wins it couldn't have been a close game?

I guess it depends on your perspective. I might get mad at an equal position I get against a stronger player who slowly grinds it into a win, and it feels like I've done nothing wrong. Sure, there are lots of draws in chess, but there's also a lot of grinds that turn out decisive just based on some tiny details.

So it's like, if you see a grinding win, you might think, wow, he can turn even the smallest advantages into a win -- nearly every position is winnable! But if you see a 13 move GM draw you just think, wow, they both ran out of ideas, chess is played out.

"Point is: do not judge what you don't understand. Chess and Go are two most intelligent games out there and no one is to judge which one is more difficult, unless you play both and mastered the one, while failing to advance in another. Personally, I have not come across such people."

While I think there is a lot of truth to this, I think it's a bit strong. That's almost like saying I can't speculate that chess is harder than checkers because I haven't played checkers nearly as much. I suppose I can't know which one is harder, but I don't think the fact that every single feature of these two games tells me that chess is (much) harder, means I'm crazy.

But yes, it's very easy to let one's biases impair their judgment on this question. I'm just saying, I don't think it's completely fruitless to talk about it and try to answer the question anyway.

Anyway, I'll have to try Go someday -- never got around to it.

Yeah, I made it sound like I'm a GM or something... in general I don't need to outplay my opponents a lot to win. In fact sometimes it's enough just to wait for a mistake.

That said, sometimes I feel like I play slightly better all game long, but my advantage slowly slips into a drawn position.

Of course it works in my favor too. One of my best draws was against a higher rated player using the idea of the wrong color bishop to build a fortress. He had tactics to enter the final position up a bishop and pawn against my lone king, but of course that would have been a simple draw.

It must be an odissey finding OTB opponents for that in Western countries I suppose.

Just checked out an explanation of the rules. I don't know, it just doesn't seem nearly as enticing as chess. It might not be harder or easier, but it seems like it would be more monotonous because you're just trying to get more territory and capture the whole time and all the pieces are the same. It's like if in chess your only goal was to gain space with your pawns and you win. I might learn it if I get more time, but I'm not exactly pumped to learn it I guess :)

I think one reason I like chess so much is because of how different types of advantages are interconnected, and during the course of a game you can trade one for another and sometimes back again... like structure, space, initiative, material, etc. It's hard to know what will be the most important, but you make your best judgement and push hard to get the most out of your position.

I don't know much about go, but for players who are actually good I know there's something similar. The play in each of the four quadrants is connected. Increasing territory in one area means the other areas being fought over are temporarily neglected, so you can trade an advantage here for an advantage there, and back again. Like in chess, you only have one move to spend on your turn. So a move can be amazing both for what it does, as well as for what the player decided not to do. (And of course later in the game they're literally connected, so you can sacrifice stones in one area to get a favorable shape in another area.)

As a more direct example of judgement, a high concentration of stones in a small area is very well defended territory... likely impossible to invade... but that's just it, it's a small area. Claiming territory with static uniform pieces may sound boring, but there are lots of interconnected judgments to make just like chess.

Umm, that's my impression from hearing good players anyway. Hard to overstate how bad I am at it  

I have only tried to play Go about twice.  But that was enough to convince me that it is not for me.  You seem to get into a very deep situation straight away.  No doubt there are principles and particular opening moves to help as in chess but still I think I would have too strong a sense of responsibility about every move.

In chess, on the many occasions where it would be quite impossible to calculate all the possible lines there will be things about the position that helpto convince you that a candidate move is at least viable.  The eight by eight square field of play is attractively confined.  In Go I think I would mostly be either paralysed or conscience stricken that I had not analysed deep enough.

As with Mah Jongg, the look and feel of the sets is delightful.

Kinda like chess... read a tactics book, read a strategy book, watch some videos (https://www.youtube.com/user/nicksibicky) and every move wont feel like a total guess anymore.

Yeah, I'm like, how can they know what a good opening is, lol. Because I hear them talk about openings similarly to chess, but it's like, don't you not know if your will move will pay off until 50 moves later anyway? :) It seems like you'd have to look 30 moves into the future to have any idea how your move will turn out. But then, I guess that's the magic of patterns and learning. Maybe this is how people who don't play chess feel when they see a game.

I just have a hard time getting over that you don't have different pieces that do different things. That's a big thing to give up when playing Go instead of Chess imo.

Haha, how can you say this when you're a chess player

But yeah, I'm sure while climbing the ranks you'd have to face many people who don't follow the rules, and be able to prove why their openings were bad... just like a chess beginner struggling to beat someone who doesn't develop or control the center in the beginning.