second greatest game

OK. Let's say that chess is the greatest game. Kind of hard to argue with when you are here right?

So what's the second best?

I have tried poker, Go, Chinese Chess, draughts [checkers] and many other games. In the end I would have to say it's othello [reversi]. Some great points of othello:

1. Every game is finished; every square has to have a disk put on it unless neither player can make a legal move in which case disks are counted for whoever wins with the most.There are no draw offers.

2. Anyone can play anyone and the game is still interesting. You could only learn the moves and play the World Champion Takanashi and it would still be a good game. Whereas in chess you would be handing your pieces to Kramnik and he would fall asleep.

3. Related to [2] othello is not just about winning - it is also about getting the most disks or in a "lost" position reducing the size of your final loss count. This introduces a whole area of skill that doesn't occur in chess or in many other games. It is possible in a tournament that someone could be lost in a game but still be able to win the tournament by only "losing" by a set amount.

4. Othello is a lot harder than chess in terms of playing othello perfectly. That is, no human being can beat an othello program  at even a moderate ply level, not even the human world champion.

Just for the 4th point, it seems a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Chess is not cracked by computers fully and still best grandmasters beat computers. There are so many different dynamics in chess and it is much sophisticated to create alghoritms for computer to calculate the lines and choose the best one. That makes the game exciting. 

9-ball!

I have played in AGA Go tournaments and USOA Othello tournaments. Othello is definitely not as complex as Chess and Go, but it’s a fun game and deeper than many people think. You aren’t going to have any 100 move Othello games. Draws are possible in Othello, but are not all that common.

One unique feature of Othello is the possibility of making multiple moves in a row if your opponent runs out of legal moves. This can be devastating in the last few moves of the game.

Othello is a game of paradox. Many players male the strategic error of trying to get ahead in the disc count early in the game. This is wrong because the best strategy is to try to run your opponent out of good moves. The fewer discs you have AT FIRST, the fewer legal moves your opponent has. 

There are only a few decent books or pamphlets about Othello strategy. I recommend Othello: Brief and Basic by Ted Landau.

I would place YINSH over Othello - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7854/yinsh

It is commonly said that YINSH is like a combination of Othello, Checkers, and Connect Four. And that's because:

• You try to get 5 markers in a row. So it's similar to Connect Four in that you try to get n-in-a-row.
• Each move you make involves one of your rings jumping over other markers. So that's like checkers. 
• When you do jump over other markers, they flip colors. Black to White and White to Black. So that is like Othello. 

Moreover, getting five in a row does not mean you will win the game. Each time you get five in a row, you take one of your rings off the board. You win when you get three rings off the board, meaning you have to score five in a row three times. Thus, each time you score a ring, you are handicapped from having fewer rings. There's a "catch-up mechanism" woven into the game.

Thus, in Chess, there are times when the game is so one-sided that you might as well resign before the game ends. In YINSH, even if you are behind, there's still good reason to continue because your opponent being ahead implies that there are fewer rings to choose from.

Unlike Chess and Othello which both start the game with a fixed starting position, the first ten turns of YINSH involve the two players placing their rings down on a hexagonal grid that contains 85 points. Each player gets five rings.

This would be analogous to Chess players alternating turns on placing their pieces on the board before the game begins. The opening theories get thrown out the

Since there are trillions of possible ways to position the ten rings on the board at the start, the games of YINSH are very diverse. Some players favor placing their rings near the edges to build a wall. Some favor the center. Some advocate for a balance of both.

Both Chess and Othello only have 1 fixed starting position - whereas YINSH has trillions of possible starting positions.

In terms of how hard it is to play perfectly, I'd say YINSH is much harder than Othello because on average, Othello has an average branching factor of 10. This means that on average, you have ten possible moves to make in a given turn. The branching factor of Othello is on par with Connect Four.

In contrast, Chess has an average branching factor of 35.

YINSH has an average branching factor of over 40.

And in Go, the average branching factor is like 250.