I’m in the mood to learn a nice, skill-requiring board or card game. I like trick-taking card games like hearts or spades, but from what I can tell go is pretty interesting too. Any recommendations?
I only played Go a few times, but it’s easy to learn the rules - yet has many layers of difficulty.
It’s much more popular in the Far East, so it may not be easy to find a nearby club. No doubt you can play on-line or against a computer program.
I’m a club bridge player + teacher, so can tell you that bridge takes a while to learn. Learning the basic play of the cards is fine, but bidding takes a while. The English Bridge Union sensibly teaches beginners just card play first.
It’s a more sociable game, because you have a partner and a single hand only takes a few minutes. (A game of Go or chess can take much longer than that, depending on the skill level and free time of the players.)
I’m a professional chess teacher 
, so can assure you that chess takes about 20 minutes to learn and (like Go) a lifetime to master. (Don’t feel put off by that - it means that you will never run out of challenges and suitable opponents!).
There are many online sites and computer programs for chess and there are also chess clubs in almost all cities and towns.
I used to play Go a lot, but have stopped since. I like to characterise Go as an entire war, and Bridge as politics (and Chess as a battle), so it really depends on how macro you want to go.
Go involves a 19x19 board, and one piece on one side of the board can affect what’s happening on the other side of the board, 18 squares away. Since there are so many options, it’s very much more “organic” than chess, and winning a battle in a local area can mean losing the war due to spending too much resources (too many stones), or simply by being in a bad position to attack your opponent’s weak areas.
I’m not so familiar with Bridge, on the other hand, but from my understanding it relies on getting a good bid, and “reading” your partner, as well as your opponent. You want to get a bid which emphasises your strengths, and prevent your opponents from bypassing your strengths, and also balance the cost of driving up the bid.
Once the bidding phase is over, again, winning depends on how well you’ve sussed out your opponent’s strengths based on how he bid. Honestly, I don’t think there’s much strategy you can use apart from play the hand you’ve been dealt at this point, but I may be playing at a lower level of the game.
I’m biased toward Go, though. You can try Go on the internet, I usually play at Kisedo Go Server, at http://www.gokgs.com/. People are generally nicer there, and there’s a beginner room where you can get your feet wet after learning the game (start with the 9x9 boards, you get a feel for the game while keeping the options easy and the length of the game short).
You can also read http://senseis.xmp.net/, a Go wiki, for more information. If you want a quick and fun video starter guide to Go, search “Go Go Igo” on youtube.
I play Bridge a lot, learnt it 18 months ago and have really taken to it - fantastic (and very addictive) game. If you’re a hearts or spades player you’ll pick up the rules and basic play effortlessly. The bidding and dummy concept, though, literally add orders of magnitude more depth and strategy to Bridge than simple trick-taking games. For this reason lessons are the usual way in to the game, so it’s a good game to start with a friend / spouse etc. (If you can successfully play bridge with your wife / husband you’ve got a bomb-proof marriage :))
You could forgo the lessons, but it’s not recommended; you’d pick up the basic play of the cards OK with a hearts background but the bidding would be a mystery. It works via ‘bidding systems’ that are very standardised at the beginner’s level. You need to get these solidly understood and under your belt, or you’ll just end up playing a pointless version of whist.
Don’t know much about Go, but concur with Glee that the social side may be a bit lacking in the West. That said, I play all of my bridge online, which is pseudo-socialising I suppose, and you could presumably do the same for Go.
The social side of Bridge is a selling point, but maybe should be qualified with the observation that the game really is dominated by the older generation - which may or may not be a good thing for you. Prior to having our baby, I played with my wife at a club in Edinburgh and the average age must have been 60. Everyone was really friendly, which is very important when you’re getting into 'mental ’ games like bridge or chess, but there was little common ground. There was no real corpus of younger players, and I understand this age profile is widespread.
Actually ‘reading’ your partner is against the rules. :eek:
Club players use bidding boxes (with all possible bids printed on them), precisely so they don’t speak during the bidding.
Here’s some examples of cheating:
Player: One Spade
Partner: (agonised pause, followed by barely audible bid) Two Spades (= I’m weak, partner - don’t go on!)
Player: One Spade
Partner: (instant response and firm bid) Two Spades (= I’m at the top end of the ramge for this, partner - go on if you have more than a minimum)
There is a lot of strategy!
Players not only decide which opponent holds which cards from their bids, but also from their decision not to bid.
As for card play techniques, they include finesse (including the amazing intra-finesse), throw-in, squeeze (many variations including the pseudo squeeze), ducking, safety play, cross-ruff, ruff+discard, removing exit card and entry creation.
Specifically named plays include Bath Coup, Crocodile Coup, Deschapelles Coup, Merrimac Coup, En Passant (they nicked this one from chess!), Morton’s Fork and the Scissors.
Yes, based on my experience (40 years in chess + bridge :eek:) the average age of bridge players is much higher than in chess.
I think it’s because young people want to start quickly (bridge takes much longer to learn) and are happy to concentrate more on winning rather than socialising.
Elderly people like a social occasion where they can talk (complete no-no in club chess) and have a cup of tea + a biscuit (easier to arrange in bridge).
Actually, I was referring to the various conventions to indicate how many of what you have and so on… but I suppose the other way works too. 
This really interests me, because I’ve never even heard of any of this (I’ve never played bridge at any level of competition, after all). Being a chess player, would you consider the level of strategy to be similar to the level in chess?
I imagine that if the cards were all laid out on the table, all these strategies would be quite obvious, and “best play” for any particular deal found rather quickly.
The top Go player from our club defected to the Bridge club, though, so that might say something about the relative merits of the game…
You are indeed allowed to give information using conventions. The rule is that your opponents must know you are using them (and thus be able to deduce exactly the same information as your partner).
Here’s a couple of examples.
- Opening one no-trump typically shows a balanced hand (no singleton, no 5 card major) and a narrow range of points (12-14 or 16-18).
So you would open INT on
S: Axx
H: Kxx
D: QJxx
C: QJx
(No other single bid could express this hand so completely; it’s a common sort of hand; opening NT obstructs the opponents as well.)
- 4NT is not used a lot as a natural bid. So Blackwood (named after the player) asks your partner to conventionally bid how many Aces he has.
If you open 2S (incidentally many players would open an artificial 2C = very strong) on
S: AKQJxxx
H: x
D: AKQJ
C: x
and partner raises you to 3S, you bid 4NT (Blackwood).
If he replies 5C (showing 0 or 4 Aces), you bid 5S. If he replies 5D (showing 1 Ace), you bid 6S. If he replies 5H (showing 2 Aces), you bid 7NT (scores more than 7S and avoids a ruff :eek:).
I think the level of complication in chess (more choices at each turn; longer games) make the strategy far harder.
Computers (like Deep Finesse) claim to be able to analyse any bridge hand perfectly if they can see all the cards. Chess computers (actually chess tablebases) are only perfect up to a total of 6 pieces on the board.
Of course bridge is still a great game, because of the bidding and the fact you can’t see all the cards. But I expect two great players would play the same bridge hand either identically or maybe in just two ways. Chess players often have 4 or more ‘candidate moves’ to choose from.
Maybe.
Would you like some sample hands posted here?!
Limited data point - doesn’t count! 
My only reservation about Go is that it may not be obvious who’s won at the end of the game.
For sure life is too short to play Chess, Bridge, Go (and Poker!) at the highest level…
Have you considered “Eurogames”? Puerto Rico has little luck (more than Go certainly, but less than bridge). Interesting choices and multiple victory strategies. No official two player though.
Check out other high rated games on BGG - most are quite brainy
Brian
[mode=bridge geek]Don’t know what bidding system you’re using, but you’re far too strong for an Acol 2S - eight playing tricks and a six-card suit is the requirement - and if you were using Acol, partner’s putative 3S response already shows an Ace. A direct 4NT opener would be quite acceptable, asking partner to bid 5C with no Ace, 6C with the Ace of Clubs, 5 of whichever other suit he holds an Ace in if he has only one, or 5NT with two. It’s a very blunt opening bid that sends the clear message to partner that you’re not interested in anything except which Ace he holds.
But of course glee’s main point stands - that neither in this case nor that of the Blackwood bid are you remotely interested in trying to make ten tricks with no suit as trumps.[/mode]
Of course you’re right about the bidding - which shows why it’s more difficult to learn than the play.
As you say, I was just trying to give an example of conventions…
For a really intellectual challenge, I recommend Mornington Crescent.
As a bridge player I am also biased. Rather than compare the relative merits of the two games, I’ll just expound a bit on why I like Bridge.
Go is certainly a “purer” game mentally than Bridge. What makes Bridge so fun though is that it combines many disparate and challenging elements: communication (in the bidding) between you and your partner; interplay in the play of the cards between you and your partner, and your opponents (it has the feel of a fencing match); constructive vs. destructive strategies, where you can choose to try to obstruct your opponents rather than help your partner out in either the bidding or the play of the cards (though the two are not incompatible); etc.
And the “declarer play” aspect of the game is unique: after the bidding is done, two players (the defense) work together (with their cards held to themselves) to take enough tricks to defeat the other side (who bid for the majority of tricks)… But those combined 26 cards are played entirely by one person (the “declarer”), whose partner’s hand (the “dummy hand”) is laid face-up on the table for everybody to see (including the defenders) and whose cards are called for by declarer. It’s a terrific ego trip to pull off something difficult in the declarer play.
And then there’s the social element. Some of the funniest moments at the bridge table are when someone is lost in a mental world of his/her own construction as to what is going on, for whatever reason. Sometimes this leads to disaster, sometimes to a stumbling into an otherwise unattainable success.
In fact, one very good reason to learn the game of bridge (even if you never really play it a lot) is to read the “Bridge In The Menagerie” books by Victor Mollo. Some of the funniest books I’ve ever read, but you have to know how to play bridge (and recognise the player types represented) to fully appreciate the humour. (I even lapsed here into British spelling because of thinking of Mr Mollo!)
Finally, in tournament (rather than kitchen table or social) bridge, the element of luck (in terms of the lie of the cards dictating the results) is much reduced, as you are compared and scored not based on the points you win/lose on the hand (which is luck, as one side may get all the Aces and Kings, for example), but how well you did with the cards compared to all other players holding your cards in the same situation (this is called “duplicate bridge”). Everybody plays the same hands (though not against the same opponents, of course).
Bridge is very much a game of ego for some people, and unpleasantly so. One bridge player stereotype, and an unfortunately commonly accurate one, is that of the bickering couple always arguing after every hand about who made the worse mistake. These bickering people are usually both weak players, and deep down they know it, but each wants to avoid seeming the weaker of the two.
Well, that’s certainly a challenge, but it can be difficult for the beginner to pick up, although it’s usually possible to make a start if you’re not too worried about playing it at anything but a social level for some time to come.
One advantage is that you don’t need a lot of formal equipment - but on the other hand, the conventions begin to be puzzling about where bridge leaves off! Merely getting to grips with Jigg’s Whip, for instance, can be post-graduate stuff in itself, and I don’t know anyone who really feels he’s mastered it.
Perhaps we should illustrate this with a simple opening line:
Maida Vale
I am not a bridge player, but the daughter of an avid Life Master. My mother loved, loved, loved bridge–she played competitive duplicate bridge, if I remember correctly. She went to a lot of tournaments, too.
From my mother’s experience, bridge players are smarter than your average Joe, especially the serious ones. She said that one of the neat things about the tournaments was the wide variety of people who were there. A lot of different professions and outlooks, but all loved bridge and were highly intelligent.
I’d definitely urge you to give it a try–there are usually bridge clubs in most towns and cities (even in the small town that my parents retired to) and they are likely to be welcoming to new members.
A lot of my mother’s ‘social’ bridge playing friends were elderly ladies. Now, it may be that bridge skews to an older demographic, or the bridge-playing kept their brains sharp. One of her friends was well into her 80s, and still playing. It seems to be good brain exercise.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but we are discussing intellectual games here.
Mornington Crescent (via a diagonal) - I win!
P.S. Barry Cryer visited my town recently. He was in great form.
n00b! You can’t get to MC while there’s the wrong sort of rain on the line, and the diamond’s incomplete. Haven’t you ever heard of approach play?
“via a diagonal” indeed. [Witchdoctor]“You think you’s playin’ wid Mrs Kettoumi?”[/Witchdoctor] 
Wrong kind of rain on the line? The Northern Line at MC is underground: how would rain get on the line?
And to end the hijack – I’ve played a little go, and find it’s deceptive in it apparent simplicity while you can spend years learning how to play well. On the other hand, I’ve playted bridge on and off for a long time, and now play about once a week: it’s a pleasantly social game at the level I play at, woith enough complexity to keep me intellectually satisfied.
Personally, I’d go with Go. There’s no element of chance (no cards shuffled and dealt), and innumerable layers of strategy.
A quick Go story: I learned to play in high school from a Japanese friend. There was a reasonable-sized group, and I became the 2nd-best player in the school.
Later on, I worked for a company that had a Go-playing group in the cafeteria at lunchtime. I challenged one of the fellows to a game. He spotted me nine stones (the maximum handicap) and kicked my butt roundly. Obviously, this was a whole new level.
He and I ended up in Japan on business at the same time, and I told that story to one of our Japanese hosts. He proceeded to spot the fellow who had beaten me nine stones, and kick HIS butt. Again, a whole new level.
I then discovered that he was the lowest-rated player in the entire office.
All these levels of skill and strategy, and the rules are simple enough to learn in well under an hour.
Another advantage is that you can play against a single opponent, so it’s easier to put together a quickie match.
If you want “brainy,” this is your game.