Go VS Chess

Well just to be clear: I'm not here to scorn Go, rather, I appreciate if Go players tell me what they like. I'd like to learn to appreciate Go as well, after all it's always an intelligent board game.

I don't know how things are in your part of the world, but in Europe it's pretty much impossible to find somebody to play Go with. Chess has followers in every nation of the world and in every culture, while Go remains a game played only by East-Asians.

I like to play in person and not on the internet, so the fact that here in the UK I can find chess clubs, chess tournament, and friends to play chess with doesn't really give me a choice on which game to play.

Of course, even if I had the choice, I would still pick chess :)

Karpov, Furman and Levitina preferred playing bridge during their chess training sessions.

As kids, we preferred bughouse over classic chess.

Many professional chess players play online poker instead of chess.

The card game marias temporarily killed chess in my club ~20 years ago.

Chess, poker and marias killed Magic The Gathering in MtG club I knew.

Nothing unusual at all. One game can become soo boring...

If I went to a chess club and they were playing anything but chess, I'd quit that club the same day.

What if they were playing tic-tac-toe?

Would you still have the heart to quit?

There are Go clubs and tournament all over Europe (the U.S also has many clubs and tournys) and they have a huge congress every year.

http://egc2013.go.art.pl/

Hmmm, one past Pres. of our local chess club went as far as saying he would not like to see go played there.  Never really understood why, until now.  (thankfully there is a go club fairly near here too)

Perhaps chess players may be right to be a little concerned about Go.  I've heard of many players leaving chess for go.  Personally, don't really understand the whole one or the other mentality, they are both beautiful and incredibly rich games tactically and strategically (go likely wins in tactical dynamics but whatever).  Thankfully (as mentioned earlier) there are also many who play both games.  Not the easiest thing to find them being played in the same room though. 

I'm thinking of taking up Go with my wife so we can both play a game that we're on an even footing on. She doesn't play chess and doesn't see the appeal of starting with an opponent who has 25 years under his belt.

I love trying out new games. Imagine starting chess over with a strength of around 800 as a complete beginner and shooting up a hundred points every couple of weeks. It's a great feeling. I love starting new games and literally learning something every game, and getting better during the game.

What I mean is if I couldn't find a game of chess there.  If someone was playing go or go-fish I don't care as long as it's still mainly a chess club.

Before I "picked" chess I skimmed though an introductory go book and an introductory chess book.  Both games were appealing to me although at the time they were both just games for fun like connect 4 or a card game and I thought it'd be fun to learn the basics and maybe I could teach my brother and we could play.

As I got more interested I eventually picked chess because there were more books on it and more local clubs and tournaments.  For a while though I played go with my brother and a friend from highschool.  Looking back we were pretty terrible... which I found out when I went to play online heh.

Go is an interesting game, but I've already cast my lot with chess, and I still enjoy it.  I don't mind if others play go in front of me, but when I go to a chess club I should be able to find a game of chess quickly.

Part of that is true, I wouldn't enjoy being terrible at a competitive game that takes years to get "good" at (although the learning and improving is fun).  But I feel like there's so much left unfinished with chess for me.  I literally have room to improve on everything... there's more than enough work for me to do with chess, still so much to be discovered, and still errors in every game.

"What are the imbalances in go? It's always X number of stones vs X number of stones. Unless of course somebody decides to play at odds." Plutonia

Imbalances arise due to intentions at an unconscious level.  Stones placed exert territory and influence both locally and at the other side of the board.  So part of the dilemma is being able to read what may happen.  The interesting part is what looks like something to one player means something entirely different to a different player.  The timing, shape, and placement of the stones determines the imbalances.  And the fact that the stones are all of equal value gives complete freedom to create tangible exact ways of attacking and defending that work both consciously and unconsciously in real life situations.  It is this factor that makes it next to impossible to cheat in Go because a computer cannot number crunch exactly what will happen.  It may, or it may not.  This humanness or complexity of the game is what is important.  Additionally, while chess is fun and a reliable source for brain training, it doesnt exactly have useable quality in the current forced domestication that society presents.  If I want something I cannot take it by force. Sure chess may teach deception and this is useful, and the ultimate rule is that in chess the timing is quite clear:  Within very narrow constraints in terms of tempo are you allowed to attack and defend, or you lose.  In Go, you could be building while the other player attacks, you ignore, then you attack, or something completely different.  Realize that Bobby Fischer invented chess 960 because he realized that opening preparation was a necessary drawback of chess.  In Go there are fuseki(global) and joseki(local) openings, but if a player is very smart and creative these so called opening rules can be blown apart literally.  You can invent your own openings.  So ultimately you are fighting on a conscious and unconscious level.

I posted a simple tactic for chess few pages back, and I asked a go player to post a tactic from go. He didn't.

I find it pretty telling that nobody has of yet posted a simple problem of go, just to illustrate the dynamics (it doesn't have to be difficult).

http://www.goproblems.com/16970?psetid=8749077

and here is a tactical prob.

simple idea, black to kill the white shape.

http://www.goproblems.com/prob.php3?id=16905&psetid=8749077

"Telling" of what exactly?

eh ok, for me it's incomprehensible.

I was hoping for a couple of screenshots with a brief explanation.

IMO Fishcer came up with 960 for the same reason he didn't play 1 game after winning the WC... with no opening theory to keep up with he could stay on top of the pack with more ease.  Openings being played out have been talked about since Capablanca's time, and as recently as this year we have Carlsen playing opening after opening that has not been deeply studied and of course he's been winning a lot.  960 is completely unecessary.

Once you move past elementary tactics you see chess actually has a lot of strategic depth... more than can possibly be mastered in a life time.  Of course chess is more tactical and less strategic than go, but plutonia complaining go is simple because there's only 1 type of piece is as misguided as characterising chess as a simple game of tactics, timing, and deception.

Shouldn't chess be compared to shogi instead of Go? Chess and Go are two completely different games. It's like comparing Monopoly with chess.

Chess, shogi, xiangqi are games that simulate a war. On the other hand, there is no war context in Go.