I know the rules of chess and have started learning Go, (though I have yet to play an actual game).
What skills are required in each game? I sense that Go players use more pattern recognition, while Chess players are more tactical: specifically they must be able to think several moves ahead.
Feel free to offer any comments relevant to the title of this post.
I haven’t played Go in a few years, but as I recall, it moves much faster than chess. Also, Go is more likely to have games depend on a single move. Chess usually requires a complex series of moves by both sides to put the board in position for one decisive move.
Overall, I prefer chess. I know there are people who prefer the faster pace of Go.
I much prefer Go to Chess. Obviously, it comes down to personal preference, and Chess is a great game, but here are my thoughts pertinent to the OP.
Go has an effective and formalised handicapping system, so that experienced and less experienced players can enjoy a game. Chess doesn’t, although players ‘improvise’ handicaps informally (e.g. the better player says ‘I’ll give you a pawn and bishop advantage’).
In my experience of Chess, if A knows his openings better than B, then A is going to win the game eventually. It’s often all over by the 9th or 10th move, and it’s just a case of going through the motions until the fundamental weaknesses of B’s opening become fatal. In Go, the game can take so many twists and turns in development that the ‘upper hand’ can change many, many times before the winner is decided. And there are no formal openings as such, although as play begins in each corner there will be some standard joseki (set positions and known sequences) played.
I like the elegant simplicity of Go - only one type of playing piece (as opposed to six in chess) and only one type of move (positioning a stone on the grid) as opposed to… however many …in chess. And yet from this stark simplicity emerges a game at least as deep as chess, and to me every bit as beautiful.
I also like the basic visual simplicity of Go It’s just about winning a bigger slice of territory than your opponent, and for the most part it’s pretty apparent just by looking whether you have some ‘territory’ or not. In a Chess game, none but the aficionados can really see at a glance whether someone is in a good or bad position.
In Go, there can be several different and independent battles going on in different areas of the board, whereas in chess it tends to be a case of you’re either winning or losing the game as a whole.
Go can be played in boards of different sizes, which makes it easy to teach and to learn. Not so with chess.
The OP refers to the different skill sets involved. I think they are pretty similar, actually. Both are ‘open’ games, in that both players can see all of the information on the board, and both eschew random events and luck (such as throwing dice). Both require strategic thinking which can extend over several moves. Both require moves which balance attack and defence. Both involve distinct phases of game play, from openings to mid-game and end-game. Both can yield positions and moves of profound beauty and elegance.
The final difference is that, as many studies have shown, the only people really keen on chess are sad obsessive loser geeks with no life and no personality, whereas Go is played by intelligent, convivial, warm, loveable types with a rich social life, with most Go conventions attracting large numbers of very attractive and desireable women just aching to reveal their kyu.
I think you misunderstand what is meant when someone says “go-go girl”. 
Enjoy,
Steven
I play chess and go. I am ok at chess but pretty good at go. Chess is very linear and almost all tactical with a minor amount of strategy going in. Go is significantly more strategic (losing in one area can actually be the loss that wins you the game… I know this sounds weird but when it happens in a real game, ie a player killing you in one area but leaving himself open enough to attack around it or on other parts of the board, leaving you with more solid territory at the end you win) and every bit as strategic.
When I played chess most of the people could get by very well by thinking 2-5 moves ahead, or if they are really good, 8 moves ahead. In go, a ladder can be thought out so that it is over 50 or 60 moves (sometimes more if you manage a circular ladder) but since the size of the board is so much larger (a 19 grid compared to an 8 grid) you have to think out at least 8 moves ahead or more in local situations to simply ensure that you have life not to mention thinking out even farther to make sure that your territory meshes well with other parts of the board so you can win.
A typical go game lasts around 200 moves or as few as about 50. Fewer than 50 means that the opponent made some stupid mistake early on and lost his potential. I have also seen very good games by high ranking amateurs go on to about 400 moves. I don’t think most chess games last much more than 100 moves, if that. I think they are closer to 60.
Go games and chess games last about the same amount of time in my experience. Though, if you get serious about it and look at old professional go games then a single game can last several months. The game that was the subject of the book The Master of Go by Kawabata Yasunari lasted several months in real life though the book fictionalized the real players names. I can’t think of chess ever lasting that long in face to face play as that was in a tournament.
That’s odd; my experience is precisely the opposite. I’ve made some good friends playing chess, but every Go player I’ve ever met has been an elitist wanker with delusions of intellectualism who won’t stoop to teach the rudiments of his game to someone who has asked politely.
And I’ve had good experiences with both Chess and Go players. Now Magic: the Gathering players, there’s a bunch of sad obsessive loser geeks with no life and no personality.
And hey, did you see my request on Star City forums about the Serum Powder article? I’m looking at it and looking at it and the more I look the better it looks. I’m thinking type 1 combo decks like Mask-Dreadnaught could make very good use of it. The key is to use them aggressively and have a combo which is reasonably robust.
Enjoy,
Steven
What’s the difference between strategy and tactics?
If true, this sounds like you can’t be a decent chess player without reading a couple of chess books. (Decent player = won’t embarrass himself too much).
---- …every Go player I’ve ever met has been an elitist wanker with delusions of intellectualism…
More questions:
How much bluffing is there in Go?
Go scoring looks a little tricky to me. How difficult is it in practice?
I would also like more elaboration on the, “Thinking moves ahead” part. That aspect seemed like it would be easier in Go, but I may be exercising wishful thinking.
I don’t play Go, and I don’t know how far ahead a good player can be expected to see. But mere look-ahead can’t be too effective, judging from the relative performance of computers at the two games. In chess, the best computer players are easily international grandmasters, and can give a (human) world champion a good game. But in Go, from what I’ve heard, the best computer programs are comparable to an elementary-school child. Of course, this could be partly due to the disparity of attention given to the two games, but I think it also reflects on the amenability of each to brute-force solutions (the type that computers are best at).
Chess is better because it has HORSIES!
:rolleyes:
You should read the tournament report by some Canadian guy who played a holidaying Jeremy Mansfield. “Aaaaah - his dice bag is a kangaroo’s scrotum, and I touched it!!!” is a rough paraphrase.
I don’t think we should hijack the chess/go thread just yet, but I think type 1 has too many one-of cards to let Serum Powder work agressively. E-mail me or PM me on SCG if you want to talk further.
Happy to answer, MFM.
“How much bluffing is there in Go?” There is at least as much scope for bluffing in Go as there is in chess, and maybe more. You can have a ‘killer’ move ready, and be trying to act as if there’s nothing special coming up. You can be in dire straits but try to give the impression of having everything under control. On the full-size 19 x 19 board, there can be several separate and independent ‘theatres of war’ in progress at the same time, and it’s quite common to try and lure your opponent into focusing on the fight in one area so that he won’t see what you have planned for the fight in another area. Then there is the beauty of the ‘ko’, which has no equivalent in chess. It’s too long to explain here, but basically in a ‘ko’ situation it matters a great deal whether you have a ‘killer’ move ready to play elsewhere on the board. Bluffing can be very important in this situation - either to try and let your opponent think you have got such a threat when in fact you haven’t, or vice-versa.
“Go scoring looks a little tricky to me. How difficult is it in practice?” Not tricky at all. You just count up the points of territory. There are only a few extra things to deal with, such as dead stones and ‘seki’ stalemate situations which don’t count towards anyone’s total. It only takes a few games to learn about these.
“I would also like more elaboration on the, “Thinking moves ahead” part. That aspect seemed like it would be easier in Go, but I may be exercising wishful thinking.” I’d say you’re wrong. You can be thinking just as far ahead in Go as in chess, and maybe further. And, as I said earlier, on a full board you are often fighting several distinct battles at once (until the end game phase), and so you are trying to think ahead in more than one complex battle.
I’ll add a little more: In chess, the skirmish is the war. The board is only 8x8, and every piece affects every other piece. In Go, some stones are in places that only have local effect, and the most important thing is to balance territory and influence, and sometimes, it’s more important to keep the influence and lose some pieces and territory, in order to win in the end.
This is mostly why computers are so bad at Go; they cannot recognise influence. To put things in perspective, what you’re talking about in Go is placing one pawn in the middle of a 19x19 board. Sure, it has some local effect, but does it affect the other side of the board? Will it turn into a territory that will form a base that can attack, and survive?
Not much, I’d say, after all, in an even match, what you can see, you opponent can see as well. Unless you can read the moves further than him, or if the move looks like it’s meant to do one thing but actually has another effect as well - however, if the other person is careful and reads out everything, I don’t see them getting surprised.
Pretty easy. If you think you can kill it, at the end of the game, try to kill it. At most, you kill it, at least, neither of you will gain anything. And it will then be obvious who lives and dies.
Good luck. =P
In Chess, every piece can only move in however many ways. In Go, you can place a stone on literally 19x19 spaces on the board. Some of those potential moves will be worthless, some will be the turning points of the game. Some sequences are a given as well, for example, if you threaten a large group, you can surely expect your opponent to try to save his group. I must say that what to do next comes with practice, soon, patterns will emerge, and you will be able to know what you “should” do, and then you will be able to read ahead. The best exercise for this is to read ladders. In ladders, either you win the ladder or you do not, there is always only one possible move, so they are easy to read, but strenous.
Be careful that you opponent doesn’t use that expectation of what you “should” do to pull off a trick play, though.
Play online as often as you can… I’m on the KGS server (google “KGS”), we’ll see if we meet up some day.