Go VS Chess

Don’t cheese me

Hey, what's this all about? Bumping an old thread... on a Monday!? Dude, Bumping Sunday was yesterday. You should've waited another few days, or posted a day earlier.

i agree with Oranegjuice

While Go is very different from chess, the comparison is one of difficulty to learn. This doesn't require studying either game to make qualitative comparisons; rather, it is performed via quantitative data (ex: how many principles and options need to be learned, counterintuitive or exceptional strategies, etc.) to reach a certain level of skill. And that level of skill can also determine which game you think is harder: Chess is a game that requires a lot of rules to be playable, but Go requires much more training to improve. While you shouldn't ask which game is better, which game is harder is an objective question dependent on the level of skill you want to attain.

Whoops, another Monday bump!

If you want to see an incredible result from a low number in a simple function, look no further than TREE(3).

Whoops for calling Chess and Go similar!

There's a digital version of 43-Man Squamish that's way tougher than both chess and Go.

Being fairly new to chess, I'd say Go is certainly harder in at least one very important way.

It is harder to play every day! A game of Go takes quite a while, it can be hard to find time for it if you're playing casually as a non-professional. Between all the normal day-to-day of work, commute, etc. it is nearly impossible to squeeze in a game of Go during the work week. Let alone have time to study or review your games.

Chess, I can easily play a 20 minute game on a lunchbreak, with time to spare for review, or tactics, videos etc.

Socially, Chess is also more convenient if you live in the US. There is only one Go club in my city, so if that time is inconvenient, no luck. Chess though, any night of the week, multiple options, libraries, coffee shops, breweries, etc.

I am more drawn to Go, I've played off and on as a perpetual beginner over the last few years. If I had the time, I would certainly play it over Chess, but Chess just scratches that itch in a shorter time-frame, with many more options for playing people in person (in the US, at least).

I love Go. It's elegant, beautiful, and can really reward intuitive play.

But I'm thinking of a vacation in Latin America soon, and I figure I can take a chess set with me & get my tail kicked in any town by somebody. But the odds are close to zero that I'd find a Go player.

Go might be more complex for Western players to understand thanks to the Japanese terms and resources. It took me a while to understand compared to chess which took about a week. But out of all the strategy games that I've played Othello is the simplest and easiest to play. Chess and go are both tied and equally fun. Checkers get more boring easily, but that's just my opinion.

Go is more difficult

As someone who has reached an reasonable/average level in each game (~1800 rapid elo lichess, and ~4kyu in go in korean rankings), I think I can give my opinion on this. To me, the complexity/difficulty of the game doesn't actually matter at all. While Go is a lot more confusing than chess, and to a beginner it feels very difficult to judge whether you are winning, etc., I think that once you have invested enough time to start to understand the game, it becomes a lot more interesting. At least in my own experience, each game in chess seemed to feel like the same sort of thing over and over again - it feels almost tedious to progress, especially in closed games, Go actually feels the opposite; every game feels unique, and there's a lot more you can do, which makes it more fun for me.