Just to let you know - there is a new hex (and havannah - another great game in this style, similar to hex) server - https://hexy.games/. Since it’s very fresh, it may be quite empty at the moment but if you have someone to play with, this is probably the best place to do it real time.
Good luck!
DISCLAIMER: I’m an author of this site (and past avid go player at the same time :D).
I never got around to playing Hex, but I think I did play a game or two of Gonnect (must be in my game history somewhere).
Also, @Samraku and I wound up playing “Goban football” (aka Philosopher’s Football or Phutball). I think a few others on the forums also played some games. See Goban football
I’ve read about Gonnect before but never played it, anyone up for a game? I think it looks like a very good variant, and it’s also easy to play on OGS. Preferably live time controls
I discovered Hex recently and was extremely surprised to see that it is not only worth playing, but also vaguely similar to Go. Really clever and elegant.
I played Hex for the first time yesterday with a board gaming friend. Since he plays a lot of chess and I play Go, we play some other abstract games together so we’re usually both on an even footing. But I think Hex is much closer to Go than chess, so I felt like I was able to pick up the game much quicker (he kept attaching instead of doing the Hex version of a one space jump/bamboo joint). Maybe next time we will play Arimaa then he can teach me a thing or two…
As someone who plays quite a bit of chess, Arimaa has so far been quite hard for me to pick up.
Then again, although I play a of lot of chess, I’ve never got gud at it, so that may speak for itself.
The stronger Arimaa players who I’ve played against often employ Go concepts like thickness, influence, and sente and gote to describe how they think about certain positions