The pieces (stones?) are boring. Look like a bunch of black and white m+ms. That's all I can comment on since I don't really know the rules. I checked Wikipedia's entry on the game....... The rules seem boring, too. There must be something to it, though, as 900 billion people play it worldwide.....

I use both these games because they are fun and they have utility value.  I find Go to be very very freeing and relaxing to play.  However I find that playing Go increases my perceptional ability so that I grow increasingly impatient with nonsense at work, and therefore I largely study chess on my lunch breaks simply to give me the energy to put up with the nonsense.  However if I had my way I would be studying go.  At my work(in a hospital) there is largely a lot of bs and nonsense that goes on during the day which is irrelevant to patient care.  I consider this to be similar to a constant fight or tactics.  So chess has the advantage here in terms of activating the left brain and dealing with bs.  With Go there is more of an appreciation of understanding of position and space and the almost unlimited possibilities.  This is why I play lots of correspondence games of Go, you really get to know yourself and the other player.

All this being said, I also notice with Go that because it is very fatiguing it impacts my weight workouts in a bad way.  Chess seems to increase my physical ability to perform work and gives me energy during the day, I actually study chess openings in books in between sets when lifting heavy weights.

In terms of time perception, I believe that because Go is largely a right brain activity, there is a feeling of escaping the world.  And yet because Go is so static, a lack of movement, after playing Go it seems that time seems to slow way down.  This is very problematic in a big city or at work, as annoyances seem to be more amplified.  With chess due to the large amount of movement, yang, if you will, time goes by quicker perceptually, so annoyances are less so.  

Both games are very interesting and have value for the reasons I listed above.

What do we think? Go is infinitely more complex than chess and entirely unsolvable. Computers cannot really beat human players, and its unlikely they will ever beat Go masters. Go is a strategist's heaven: vast, yet intricate positions with each move having implications hundreds of moves later. And yet, chess allows for beautiful piece coordination and spectacular tactical motifs through elaborate variation calculations: sudden and rupturous annihilation with the deployment of entirely different forces, each filling its perfect role in the onslaught... Thoughts?

But they do call it a knights jump when you put your stones in a L shape.

Go Pros and Cons:

Pro: a pretty engaging manga turned anime series "Hikaru no Go"

Con: the challenge of even obtaining the supplies for traditional play

Go sucks....

     It is just a variant of chess for people who can't remember how the pieces

move and what checkmate entails.

I play both games,  Chess at 1750 ELO and Go at 2 kyu. I also enjoy writing programs to play games (Connect 4, Othello, Checkers, Chess). So I felt in a good position to comment.

Chess is a great game. It suits our western philosophy where anything can be treated as a battle. Go on the other hand is more like world politics where it's perfectly acceptable to loose a local battle as long as you gain compensation that can be used elsewhere on the board. I actually think Go is a more beautiful game to look at but then a little understanding helps.

The advantage of chess in the West is that it's easy to find a decent oponent while finding any oponent in Go can be difficult. Obviously that reverses in the East. It's also quite an old game (1500yrs) that has stood the test of time. There are a few disadvantages to Chess - I personally don't like seeing draws (I think the number of drawn games practically killed of checkers) and it gives me an uneasy feeling knowing that computers play our "intellectual" game better than us.

The advantages of Go include a handicap system that allows me to have an equal game against players of widely different skills. Draws are very uncommon. It's also an ancient game most likely created around 4000 yrs ago. I can also easily beat any computer program even though a huge amount of work has gone into the programming the game. The big disadvantage is that just too few people play it over here.

Even taking More's law into account I don't feel either game is solveable and just creating a world champion program doesn't mean you've solved the game. So which game do I play when I go to the pub?

I prefer playing backgammon, preferably for money - go figure!

This diagram shows shows the relative complexity and ease of programming for a variaty of games (including chess and go).

wow. the highest rated chess player in japan is 2316. didn't realize just how much go is their chess. even so still seems a little strange to me that chess is that unpopular there. japan is the most "westernized" eastern country there is no?

if nakamura hadn't come to the united states, would he be a go player and not a chess player?

Shogi is great.

Yeah, but the problem is the same as with Go - hard to find anyone to play.  I acquired a small wooden set and board back in the 1960s, a friend and I would play sometimes.  But other than demonstrating it to others a few times over the years, it hasn't been out of the box!

so you are saying shogi is more popular than go in japan? and is more analogous to say chess in russia?