Compare Go to Chess
Quotes
"While the Baroque rules of chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play go."
- -- Edward Lasker
"You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go."
- --
Hans Berliner, The New York Times, Feb 6, 2003.
"We have no intel. We can't find the insurgents. When they bomb something, we only know about it afterward. We can't figure them out. Someone said, 'We play chess, they play Go.'[6] All we can do is lose. All we can do is bomb."
- -- Seymour Hersh? quoted on
Common Dreams
Similarities
- It is a strategic game, with no random chance
- It is an abstract wargame
- You need a logical mind and the ability to look several moves ahead
- 9x9 go is more like chess than 19x19 (less strategy, one tactical clash settles the game, material more important), and it can even be played on a chess board!
Differences
- Go has fewer rules. (Yet this allowed for all sorts of moves to be played, so Go can be a more intellectually challenging game than the other two types of chess - there are nearly factorial(361) possible games of Go which is a really huge number.)
- And yet: "I think this is the only weakness of go, that starting period in which beginners get the rules explained but can't really do anything with them at all. The two months it took me to get a grasp of what really was the general idea, are no exception. Only people slightly obsessed with the game will come out on the other end of this. In that respect chess players are a lot better off, there may be more rules but the goal and the way of playing become clear much sooner than with go." --Catalin Taranu
- Strategy is much more important than in chess...
- ...because the board is much bigger.
- Focusing too much on tactics will win you one fight, but lose you the game.
- Taking pieces isn't as important. In chess, a one pawn advantage is decisive at higher levels. In Go, the focus is more on territory and influence.[0]
- Go has an excellent handicap system that allows players of different strength to enjoy a real game not a crippled version of it. [1] It's possible to compensate not only for differing skill levels but also for the advantage of the first move[2], in a very fine-grained way.[4]
- Draws are extremely rare.[3]
- Once a move is made it is always there to stay, so every move is as critical as a pawn move in chess.
- Go is always dynamic, so you cannot "sit" on a position and press a positional advantage in safety, as you can in chess.
- You can get much further in go without memorising many openings (though this is no longer true if you want to go beyond shodan level roughly equivalent to 2000 rating).[5]
- No computers to make years of study and effort seem futile -- in go, you can beat the best programs as an amateur player.
- In general, a game of go takes longer than a game of chess and casual club games are usually played without a clock (though "blitz go" is quite popular on internet servers).
- In Go, players build up their positions - there are more stones on the board with each move.
Should we Compare the two Games at All?
Whether comparing Go to chess is a BadHabit or not is in dispute (see /discussion), but what isn't in dispute is that it's a bad habit to ridicule either game by comparing it to only the good qualities of the other game. Both games have their strengths and weaknesses. When you're in love, the mole on your beloved's nose becomes a beauty mark.
In the west, Go is a bit of an underdog to chess, in terms of popularity. One needn't disparage it in order to advocate Go, as Go can stand on its own. If you must compare or criticise (and it's very difficult not to), try to do it thoughtfully and academically and not as an act of proselytizing.
See Also
Footnotes
[0] The typical territory versus influence exchange in go has
an analogy in chess, namely a sacrifice of material for the
initiative. The difference is that essentially every go game
features such exchanges. ilanpi
[1] The weaker player is given a handicap; he starts with a number of stones already on the board, before the first move. This is equivalent to the stronger player passing several times, which is possible because the goal is not focussed on a single figure but on gaining overall territory and because the Go board is initially empty.
[2] Points are customarily given to the player taking the white stones. This is called "komi", and is usually 6.5 points.
[3] When komi is given, a fractional point is usually added. This makes it impossible to have an equal result. (Draws are still possible in other ways, but they're very rare.)
[4] For agreement and disagreement with this statement see the headline "Handicap" on the /discussion page.
[5] Sez who? --Bill
[6] This is a reference to the John F. Kennedy
Cold War statement: "We play poker, they play chess." Since journalist Hersh couldn't get this very well-known reference right, you got to wonder about the rest of his inflammatory statement.
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WME: Sebastian