chess and other games question

Chess requires a  lot of strategy and calculations.

I think that the complexity inherent in chess is heads above that in any of the games above.

Also, in all of the games you've cited, with the exception of checkers (which has incidentally been solved), there is an element of randomness involved: dice, cards, or the drawing if tiles (which is analogous to cards) and in the case of poker, the human factor.  Because of this they are incomplete information games and the strategy needs to take that into consideration.  Chess is a complete information game (as is checkers) and in my mind I associate that with a more pure form of strategy where any uncertainties (namely your opponent's response) can theoretically be 100% accounted for.  Not that I don't enjoy those other games (especially Risk and poker, despite them both having a bit of a flaw as socially enjoyable games in the elimination aspect of both), I just prefer chess to them by a large margin.

I should also mention that I've seen a number of Chess vs. Go discussions in here.  The conensus seems to be that there is actually much more complexity inherent in Go than there is in Chess.

Mancala is another good complele information game

Poker is great, but modern poker is primarily based on psychology rather than strategy and calculations. Although a player with optimal strategy and calculations will beat lesser-skilled players like 90% of the time,all the good tournament players know the optimal strategies and odds, and luck compensates a lot for minor strategical disadvantages. The real way to get an edge in poker is reading your opponents, and playing the players and not the cards, a much less important skill in chess now than it was before. Modern chess is all about making the perfect moves. 

Scrabble, to me, would be a lot more fun if it were primarily based on how good you are at forming words rather than using the board to your advantage, i.e. you could make an awesome six-letter word, but that would mean giving your opponent the opportunity to use a double or triple word score, so you choose not to. Also, there's a lot of luck based on the letter draw.

There is a lot of skill in Monopoly, which makes it interesting. A good player will almost always beat a lesser-skilled player, just like in poker. However, because of the dice rolls, luck plays a huge factor in some games. A lot of games are just won immediately if you can collect a solid color group in the beginning of the game and throw houses on it.

I've never gotten into backgammon, checkers, and Risk because they just never caught my interest.

BorgQueen is right though in saying that anything that involves dice and/or cards will invariably be decided by luck rather than skill. At some point, both players will be of nearly equal skill level, and it's just a matter of who gets the better dice rolls or card draws that determines the winner of the game. Contrast this with games like Tic-Tac-Toe or Chess, where as long as you have the optimal strategy down pat you can never lose.

I like playing Scrabble, Monopoly, and poker for fun.  Don't really play the others. 

I've always been a "games" person be it board games or cards. Chess is of course my all time favourite always has been and always will. I can see myself playing chess for as long as I can. As you can gather from my name, I also love poker specifically texas hold'em (mainly short handed limit however have tried no limit and full table 10 players). I've played online poker for a few years now and regard it as my second favourite hobby, gives me a break from chess not that I need that too often.

Scrabble I enjoy immensely also and have played that online too, also the occasional game with family.

Backgammon now probably my next favourite board game. Played heaps over the years with family and also online quite some time ago.

Good old checkers, played as a kid but gave up on it when I discovered chess even considered playing it online but soon come to my senses. Not a bad game though just a poor cousin to chess.

Played cards (apart from poker) when I was younger but not recently though, mainly 500 and cribbage. However during holidays as a kid many years ago I use to play pontoon (21) and draw poker with 2c pieces.

Tempted to learn Go as it appears to be a fascinating game but come to the conclusion that time is the issue and with all my other hobbies would make it very difficult. Right now chess and poker take up most of my leisure time.

Regarding monopoly and similar games good for entertainment only, hard to take them seriously given the huge luck factor. Plenty of pleasant childhood memories sitting around the monopoly board for hours and even days though.

I've even dabbled in Blackjack but only as an occasional treat.

I used to work in the table-top game industry, and I've played a wide variety of board and card games. Although I'm looking to sell off most of my collection, I curretly have around 180 games, and at one time had closer to 300.

I have always thought Chess and Poker to be the two greatest games ever designed, for three reasons: they are easy to learn, they have a great depth of mental engagement (strategic/psychological/probabilistic/whatever), and they support a large number of variants.

My favorite other games are Traders of Genoa (a pure trading game), Illuminati (vicious strategy/politics game), Settlers of Catan (trading/development game), and San Juan (development game). All of these have some element of luck, and I am coming to think I prefer them because I have poor visualization skills. Which is why I've come to Chess.com, where I can spend three days fiddling with an analysis board before making my move.

In the pure strategy realm I always found the GIPF project facinating. It's a series of seven games, each with special moves. Any use of a special move can be challenged, and the challenge is resolved by playing another game in the series. The idea can be extended to other games, even Chess. Octi also seemed interesting, but I've never had a chance to really play it. With four players I love Pyramidis, although while all players have complete information in Pyramidis, it's pretty hopeless to try and plan very far ahead. And of course theres always the other games in the Chaturanga family with Chess, such as Shogi and Xiang-qi.

It's an interesting social commentary that no one here has thus far mentioned Bridge, which at one point not that long ago was played regularly in homes all over (at least) America.