39: Go vs. Chess 

I play both chess and Go, but find myself wanting to play Go way more these days and personally I like it a lot more. I feel like winning in Go is more satisfying than when I win in chess. Player base is the biggest drawback for me though since it can be hard to find people to play with, although I just taught 3 people how to play this past weekend so I hope they stick with it.

i have an old chessboard in my family which is 100-110 years old. its pretty large and has a beautiful sound. as satisfying as any expensive go board i played on. although the pieces has fabric on the underside it just makes the sound deeper by absorbing high pitches. but yeah, go imo is just a better game. i played chess semi-competitively from a young age and always liked it. when i was around 20 i found a cheap-ass go board and started playing with my gf. in two months i read most of senseis library and went to any live event possible. im pretty bad at go ever since (1 dan on a better day), but I play almost every day and love it. recently i found chess again, and i found a new fascination with it. it has more "quantum entanglement like behaviour". in go there are non-local-2d connections with ko and ladders and such, but its still mostly local and 2d. chess is full of non-2d topology of causality, what is nice to experience. id say chess is a better game than 9x9 go, but has nothing on 19x19. 19x19 go is full of flow, elegance depth and creativity.

I really liked that episode! Very interesting to compare them in area I didn't expect at all. I realise only now how satisfying the "stonk" of the stones is, and that chess is surprisingly silent in comparison. I knew the rules of chess before Go, and I play both game, although I'm more proficient at Go. I couldn't explain why, however. As I started playing, I quickly got the hang of it, how the stones move, how they behave. Reading a tsumego is becoming automatic. I spot potential cuts with little efforts. When I look at engine move, I usually understand their motivation. Being a kyu player, I have a lot to learn, obviously, and by no mean I pretend I've figured the game out. But, I got the flow of it relatively quickly. On the other hand, chess is still mysterious to me. Sometimes I look at my position and I have no idea who is better, no idea where the potential weaknesses are. Even when looking at engines move, I can't figure out their justification. I put my bishop in f4, engines says it's an inaccuracy and prefers g5, why? No idea. Other times, I have no idea how to progress, and am almost tempted to pass my turn, whilst in go, I always have multiple candidates move, and I can always justify my moves (doesn't mean I'm right, but I never play a waiting move, unlike in chess.) That's a funny difference. In go you never want to pass, although you can. In chess sometimes you want to pass, but you can't. About the differences. One major thing to me is the draw. You cannot force a draw in Go, whilst in chess, players can silently agree to a draw by exchanging all their pieces. Even worse, white can play for a draw, and force black to take risks and worsen his position to go for the win. For me this is absurd. I've seen so many high leve games where one player clearly dominates, but because they fails to convert their advantage at the correct moment, it'll end in a draw. You said in your episode about hot takes that if two players display equal strength in the game, they should have equal result. For me chess has the opposite problem: one player can have a much better play and still fail to get a superior result. Another one is, the "weight" of the rules. It's hard to explain so let me give an example: in chess, you cannot castle if the king moved, because it's the rules. Pawns can move twice on their first movement, because it's the rules. Knights can jump over pieces, because it's the rules. A threefold repetition is a draw, because it's the rules. When playing, I "feel" the rules restraining my movements, what I can and cannot do. I don't have that feeling with Go. The rules of Go feel more like "rules of physics" that you must navigate to win. With the exception of ko, I never tell myself "I can't do that, that's against the rules" when playing Go. Another difference is that in chess, one player can force the game to end, through checkmate. This allows for fast time control. One player cannot stall time indefinitely, which makes blitz and bullet popular time formats. In go, even blitz game take some time. There was blitz competition in Geneva with 20 minutes for each players, no increment. The games quickly turned into who can place stones the fastest, regardless of wether it's a good move or not. Finally, the international federation. I've heard a lot of criticism about the FIDE, but you have to admit, they do a decent job at promoting the game worldwide. The world championship, world cup and grand swiss all are competitions followed by so many people, from everywhere. Go doesn't have that. I'd honestly like a world go championship. Having a preson with an official title "Go world champion" would do a lot to promote the game.

Great Episode! I would also like to suggest a another episode topic: "streaming go" or "go live streamer" What streamers do you watch? What makes a go stream entertaining? I really love the OGS announcements for Twitch. I think it helps building go communities. Also saw a go stream on youtube shorts the other day and was really surprised by it. Do people stream go on Tiktok? And then also streaming live competitions and do commentary

I enjoy Go more than chess, personally.

It's a bit unfair to compare popularity of go and chess in western world. If you compare popularity of go to shogi or xiangqi than go clearly wins. However low popularity of go is a big downside because it is so much harder to find an opponent to play against on a real board. I don't know about US, but in Europe the biggest cities have go clubs with 5-30 members in each in avarage. But outside big cities it's almost imposible to find a single soul to play with.

the answer is bridge