Go vs Chess: Compare and Contrast

Chess and Go have some similarities and some differences. Makes me think it would be a good title for an essay. Now I get to offer my unbalanced opinions, cos it's by blog nhar har har.

Thing is right, there was an article on the news the other morning about chess possibly becoming a part of the national curriculum. They were like, "it's an ancient game that was used to teach strategy for battles in ancient times. It develops strategy and forward planning and critical thinking and whatnot..." I was like, "Go does all those things, AND it's better." Thing is though, it doesn't.

This is the start of a game I played not too long ago.

I think I know my audience a little, and it is safe to assume you know some things about chess and have played the game, but are not so familiar with go. Chess players boast that chess has been around for 1500 years. Whereas go appeared in China in the 3rd century BC, and according to legend was invented two thousand years before that (apparently). Since then it has been embraced into Japanese culture and the Chinese are more into other things, like snooker and swimming. In some ways, go is a much simpler game, having only one type of piece called (for technical reasons) a "stone". In another way it is less simple, because its game tree is bigger. This is because the board is bigger, when faced with a typical board position there are more possible moves for you to choose from and the games typically last for more moves.

After 50 moves things are starting to taking shape.

But what about the games themselves. Chess has six different types of pieces that all have their own rules about what you can do with them. Not only that, but it has a specific initial set up. This makes it messy and complicated; it has obviously been made up to model something else. Whereas go has one rule. Everything else in the game is a consequence of that rule. Go just seems much more natural, it was there waiting to be discovered like some piece of mathematics. I don't think anybody could say the same about chess.

After 100 moves it is still anybody's game

But what about the gameplay itself? Chess is all about strategy and planning. You see gambits that might initially appear to be blunders, but are in fact a way to give up a piece for superior position. You are encouraged to analyse the possible responses to a prospective move, and then look at how you might respond to each of those. Often you end up looking several moves ahead. This kind of thinking rarely helps in go (it would be wrong to say it never helps). Instead you spend your time looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the whole board, looking to exploit weaknesses in your opponents position, or defend weaknesses in your own. You never see amazing and unexpected moves that turn a game. Instead you can play to a fairly high standard just by not making any blunders.

150 moves

Playing go becomes like meditation. If you focus on a particular stone or part of the board then you will forget the rest of the board and loose. If your play is too attacking you will loose, if your play is too defensive you will loose. You learn to look at the board as a whole as you search for the right move. You need to not worry about the level or style of your opponent, just think about the stones on the board.

200 moves. Something cunning has gone on in the bottom right, which probably decided the game. I am not sure how I managed that looking at it now.

However, what I actually like about go is that is it quite easy to improve at it. In chess I think you can easily learn what all the rules are and learn about a few popular openings and strategies, but I really struggle to get beyond that. I suspect there are multitudes of beginners at chess, but not so many intermediate players. Go is quite the other way around. Once you have grasped how the game works and what you need to do to get life and territory and stuff, you can quickly improve. I found it amazing how I could recognise shapes and patterns in the stones and immediately know what was going on and how to respond. That never happened with chess. Go problems definitely help with this. (Obviously chess has chess problems, but I think they are more challenges than a learning tool.) I found the hardest thing about go was learning all the Japanese names for things.

The final position. Black wins by 1.5 points. It was actually a really close game, but I honestly picked it at random when selecting a game to use here.

I doubt my undirected ramblings have actually encouraged anybody to take up the game of go, so I will have to be more direct:

Take some time to learn go, it's great.

In other news, I recently had the Asian Affair Pizza from Penistone Balti House. It was really nice. Proper greasy and spicy and yummy. There was a lot of topping, so inevitably a hunk of curry-cheese-goo would fall off and I would have no choice but to pick it up with my fingers. Mmm...