I’m a professional game designer and Go is most elegant game I’ve ever played. It’s so very, very simple and so very, very deep. If someone said I could only play one game for the rest of my life I would pick Go.
This is all true of chess as well.
I teach new pupils chess in 20 minutes.
Later they discover the different levels - (the numbers below are in the ELO international rating system, where a difference of 400 points equates to a 10-0 result in a match):
complete beginner: 400
newbie: 800
club player: 1200
regional player: 1600
national player: 2000
international player:2400
world champion: 2800
You can play a complete game of chess in 10 minutes (i.e. 5 minutes each using a chess clock), 30 minutes (friendly game at home), 2 hours (club game), 7 hours (international game) or 2 years (postal chess).
There’s also the world of chess problem composing and solvong.
Chess is awesome. Besides what everyone has already mentioned, there’s also a rich chess history. There’s a reason it’s the world’s most popular, oldest game. I’ve only played Go once and didn’t understand the rules, so I can’t tell you about that, but in chess, the briliancies of games that happened hundreds of years ago are still awe-inspiring.
Secondly, I encourage everyone here to check out Khet. It’s like chess, but with lasers. One of the cooler aspects is it’s a new game so everyone starts off at the same level. It wouldn’t take much, I think, to be the best in the world (relatively).
I didn’t say there was rain on the line at Mornington Crescent - but glee couldn’t execute his vaunted “diagonal” without the wet rails coming into effect. Hotchkiss 1937 is the standard reference text.
Yes, Chess and Go are both deep games, with simple rules and complex play. They’re definitely more pure mentally than Bridge.
BUT, Bridge has a highly social element to it as well. Not only is it mentally challenging to figure out the best percentage bid or card to play… But you can also choose to take actions to prevent your opponents from having the best information to figure that out as well, in both the bidding and the play.
And the partnership aspect of it makes it more social than a one-on-one, me-vs.-you mental arm wrestle. If someone likes that aspect of Spades, a closely related card game and as was stated in the OP, then Bridge is definitely the Final Destiny for the serious player.
I like Chess and Go as well, but Bridge feels much more like, well, like life to me than either of those games. Those games feel like problems to solve, while Bridge has the potential for humor and passion as well as spite and malice.
Are there any moves in Chess or Go that are both (a) ridiculous, inconsistent with earlier actions and actually laughter inspiring, yet (b) legal and (c) potentially inspired instead of just stupid? (c.f. stories involving “The Rabbit” from Victor Mollo’s Bridge In The Menagerie books!)
Has anybody ever killed someone over his play in a game of Chess or Go, then got off the murder charge by reason of the jury determining it was justifiable? (OK, it didn’t quite go down exactly that way, but in the Bridge community the tale of the Bennett Murder is legendary.)
If my memory’s correct, modern chess appeared in the 1400s or so, and its oldest predecessor somewhere around 600 AD. Go, on the other hand, goes back at least 2,000 years. So chess certainly isn’t the world’s oldest game.
I also doubt that chess is the most popular game in the world. It’s great, and it’s popular, but I’ll bet there are more poker games going on at this moment than chess games. Heck, I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if there were more people playing World of Warcraft at this moment than chess.
Hmmm, tough call. One thing I neglected to mention was that I’ve given chess a try, but was never any good at it. I just don’t have good visualization skills, I suppose. I could never picture what would happen past a few in the future. Would that hold me back from go? On the other hand, I’m learning japanese and want to spend some time there soon. From the previous posts, it seems like go is a pretty big deal there.
I’ll put in another vote for bridge. My partner and I have been playing together for about 5 years, and I find I’d rather play tournament duplicate bridge than do just about anything else. Indeed, if I ever won the lottery, I’d play bridge just about every day. It’s easy to obsess on bridge.
If your local club is anything like mine, the players are super-friendly, but serious. I played social bridge before joining the duplicate club, and I soon realized I didn’t really understand the complexity of the game. Bridge is absolutely amazing, and the deeper I go, the more challenging it gets. The club players taught my partner and I to play well (by clobbering us every week for a year), and now we hold our own and have won many times.
As a bonus you meet some interesting and very smart people!
Oh believe me Go is HUGE there. The Nihon-kiin is the national Go “institute” - if you’re remotely interested in Go, and are in Japan, you owe yourself a visit. One of my club members went, and all I got was a lousy wristband. And some game recording papers.
I never did very well at chess either, because I find chess too… mathemathical.
In my mind, Go is a lot more organic. It can be described in about 6 rules, and each piece is exactly the same as any other piece. Strategy in Go is described in terms such as “heavy”, “light”, “sphere of influence”, “jump”, “slide”, “solid”, “stable”… all very organic, and very intuitive (to me, at least!), and less reliant on reading ahead simply because it’s almost impossible to calculate the best next move. There are literally hundreds of posibilities for each move, unlike the say 10? or so possible moves in chess. In some way, the reason why Go is played in such an organic manner is because you simply can’t calculate the next move, so you have to rely more on positional strength. Although, I suppose when computers become powerful enough to calculate that many moves, all allusions to an “organic” game will be lost.
I guess what I’m getting at is that if you’re interested in the wider view of the board, with less emphasis on individual pieces, I’d really advise you to try Go. I’d advise you to try Go anyway. 
As an aside, if you’re interested in anime, you may want to see if you can get your hands on “Hikaru no Go”, which is an anime on Go. It’s good drama, and gives an idea of how Go is taken in Japan.
Here are the top 10 most fantastic chess moves in games, according to the excellent researcher Tim Krabbe.
Studies such as the Saavedra are pretty unbelievable. Just 4 pieces, yet there is a single lengthy winning line involving stalemate, under-promotion and a final twist.
Never mind Bennett (who played the hand badly) or Mrs. Bennett (who was an even worse player).
Fox and James in their admirable ‘The Complete Chess Addict’ recount how an Indian Maharajah used to stage living chess displays, starring elephants as rooks nad using virgins as pawns. :eek: 
And the winner of the game used to get his pick of the virgins. Now that’s how a game should be played, 
:: posted snipped::
I play Go, not very well (I think the strongest I got was ~2k when I played a lot). I learned from my Dad who was roughly a 3 or 4 Dan.
My Dad likes to tell a story about his Go club. They had a ranked professional player from Japan come to town (this was probably in the late 70’s, early 80’s). The player, whose name I cannot remember, came in to teach a bit for this club. The player challenged 9 guys to a simultaneous game. He gave each of the 9 guys a 9 stone handicap. He then went on to beat 8 of the guys by the same number of stones. The last guy also lost, but only by 1 stone. Note, the player from Japan was a mid-strength player.
I like Go quite a bit and recommend it to people because on top of being fun and challenging, it gets you thinking in a different direction. In Go you have to think about the little tactical battles and how they affect the overall strategy more than any other game I’ve played.
Slee
With go you do need to be able to read ahead a little to figure out how particular tactical situations will resolve. But understanding the strategic situation as a whole depends more on the player’s intuition than chess does.
Computers can play world-class chess. They just brute-force their way through all the possibilities. But computers can’t play world-class go because the number of possible moves quickly becomes astronomical.
Heh, there’s a story like that in the Hikaru no Go manga mentioned above. A teenage go prodigy takes on a bunch of adult amateur players at once. The first one is pleased to discover that he’s managed to lose by only one stone despite the prodigy being on the fast track to turning pro. Then the next player loses by exactly one stone. And the next. And the next. Finally it dawns on them that the prodigy is just toying with them.
go with Go. It’s a fantastic game. The old saying of “five minutes to learn, a lifetime to master” is really true.
Another astonishing chess position is with just two Kings and two pawns. It features a series of accurate moves and two different lines of play.
(I don’t know if Go has the same thing…)
White has a king on c4 and a pawn on e4;
Black has a king on e8 and a pawn on e6.
White to play and win.
I give the spoilered solution below. Moves followed by an ! are the only way to win. (Alternative wins are shown in brackets.)
1. e5! and now either 1. … Kd7 2. Kb5! Kc7 3. Kc5! Kd7 4. Kb6! Kd8 5. Kc6! Ke7 6. Kc7! Ke8 7. Kd6! Kf7 8. Kd7! Kf8 9. Kxe6 1-0
or 1. … Kf7 2. Kc5(b5) Kg6 3. Kc6! Kg5 4. Kd7! Kf5 5. Kd6! Kg6 6. Kxe6 1-0.