Go VS Chess

And #356 too! 

I'd say the difference of feeling between the two is chess is more like coordinating an assassination team and go is more like fighting a large scale war because it's not about any target but about dominance.

What I find interesting in go or even shogi, is their flexibility : you're not bound to one board size and you can use handicaps. Having handicaps in chess would be too hardcore, a piece lost is quite crippling and you won't get it back.

As for the depth of the difficulty, it's all about who is the opponent. I don't see an inherent difficulty in those games.

You didn't know Go or played it, yet you think you are qualified to say that Go is less fun, emotional or popular than Chess, this is a joke. Go is known and played all over than world, while Chess is primarily played by Europeans, many people in other continents don't even know Chess. Even many people on this Western Chess forum are Go pro players. Are half the people on this forum East Asian? Go is the most popular 'Chess' in the world in terms of number of people playing, even Xiangqi maybe more popular than Chess. If you go to a forum in China, few will know what Western Chess is. Speaking of emotion, have Chess players vomited blood during games in despair and desperation? Or even died weeks after a match in disappointment? Could Chess break down a player to tears in a match as seen in Ke Jie vs Alphago? Go has been played for thousands of years, and the amount of theories accumulated is incomparable to other games, how long has Chess been in existence? 

The three great games are go, chess and bridge.  If you are dating a woman in another city, visiting her regularly and want to teach her something fun at which you can beat her regularly while having nice talks, go it is. 

I've recently started looking into Go. I can tell just from outset that Go is MUCH more complicated and intricate. Chess is basically tactics with a little bit of strategy, GO is almost entirely strategic (with a little bit of tactics) and so complicate and far reaching. I don't even think it's close and I hardly know how to play the game!

Nick Sibicky has some good stuff on youtube you can check out.

I think the first misconception is people think because the board is big that it's more complicated, but sort of like chess, most legal moves a strong player isn't even going to consider, they're just bad or make no sense.

And some people talk about how it's hard to learn... but IMO it's just like chess. You have to play a lot and study a lot to get any good.

As for tactics and strategy, that actually why I like chess, I think it blends them together the best (Shogi is almost all tactics for example). But one great thing about go is there are no draws. Imagine playing a chess game where you just slightly outplay your opponent... so you win

I play both chess and go. I am about 1200 rapid in chess and a 16 kyu in Go. I've heard of Go players becoming dan in 1 year of practice but rarely hear of chess players becoming 2000 rated in 1 year. So although go is harder for computers to master I think it is debatable as to whether which has a steeper learning curve or is even a harder game.

I wish I could play GO as well as chess. I think Chess and Go is the Ying and Yang of ancient board games.

Two games that could not be more different, yet humanity is so much richer for their existance.

I play shogi as well sometimes. It's pretty easy to learn if you are good at chess. I am 1100 on Shogi Quest app and have only played 50 games on the app. I could easily see myself getting to 1200 on shogi quest to equal my chess rating.

The thread is about GO vs Chess.

Not enough westerners play shogi to make much about it. Mostly because Shogi is so close to chess. GO on the other hand, has the most simple rules, yet the depth of play is incedible. Plus, GO and Chess have always been compared to each other. Primarily because they are polar opposites of each other as games. The also both use different, but overlapping parts of the brain. 

Although both needs calculations and patterm recognition, GO is far more about pattern recognition, bit in a different way compared to chess. 

Chess have far more calculations, and the patterns mostly revolve around memorizing combinations, and being able to spot those combinations in different board configurations.

Go is far more subtle with it's patterns. Especially when you get higher level.

FYI...

GO is not boring.

If your new to GO, play on a 9x9 board. The games are fast, and lively. Plus a 9x9 board is plenty big enough to practice many patterns. After a few days, your brain will be begging for a 19x19 board, just so it can stretch it's imagination, and have room for lots of patterns.

If your on the clock, you get a certain amount of time for unlimited moves. Then after that, you get a few seconds for each additional move. So there is a built in pressure cooker for finishing a game.

When I was learning GO about 40 years ago, I spent some time playing 13x13 between the 9x9 phase and graduating to the full 19x19 board. I thought it was useful at the time.

Both games are difficult to master, and both games have programs that have beaten the best players in the world.

Go was far harder to program an engine capable of winning against a super grandmaster, but it's understood now that a far differenr approach to programming was needed, and that it would take much more computing to pull it off.  The reason isn't due to brute force in the game of go, but rather a problem of pattern recognition.  

Humans are great at looking at random patterns and finding similarities to other patterns and interpolating differences and figuring out why a slight change in one pattern can lead to vastly, and quickly changing, different patterns. Somthing computers suck at unless it's artificial intelligence.

Yes, I find noughts and crosses quite challenging too!

There's quite a lot of thread so it may have already been mentioned that when the Lasker brothers had cornered the market in chess in the West they decided to do the same with Go in he East and got nowhere at all. 

Chess is much more classic

We all know that in every form of game there is always an Asian who's on another level. Chess might be the only game where Asians aren't dominant. Why? It's because there exists is a similar game called GO that is more sophisticated, harder and beautiful that Asian overlords don't care to play chess.

cheese