Hi all. I’ve studied and played chess for a few years at the club level, nothing serious like tournament play. It’s a fine game but I’m not content. So here I am, to learn more about the game of Go and see if it scratches the itch.
Welcome to the fun. If you want a friendly correspondence game with another ex-chess-player, feel free to send me a challenge!
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I’ve been in that situation myself. When you start playing Go, it is a frustrating game. You make a lot of mistakes and at first you don’t even know what you did wrong. After a lot of lost games, you finally start to grasp the game. That’s where the fun begins. I still like both games, but the shear endless possibilities in Go just give it the edge for me.
Have fun!
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Hahaha yeah, and after a lot of games after that I finally started to realize just HOW MUCH do I not know a thing about this game and still have no idea where to play most of the time 
and it gets even more frustrating. But it is so much fun
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I was a fairly accomplished chess player back in the day, but after learning GO I began to find chess claustrophobic. It felt like I was conducting a sword fight in a very small room.
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I like both games and play both pretty regularly. Go is a much more open game. Your space of possible moves is huge, and this lends itself to the game feeling far more free-form than a game of chess, where I know based on the opening roughly what kind of game I’ll be playing. Chess, though, tends to be more dramatic. Sacking a piece to go for your opponent’s king gives a rush that I haven’t found in go.
My recommendation would be to play 40-50 quick games against the computer on a 9x9. This won’t teach you to play go, but you’ll learn “how to move the pieces”, more or less. Have fun! It’s a great game, and a great companion to chess!
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Due to smaller board size? Or a narrower scope of viable play options at any given moment? Perhaps the two go hand in hand?
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My usual oponent is a former chess player too, who wanted a pause, and was frusrated at the beggining, but now he is very interested in the strategics and tactics of Go.
Go ahead 
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To answer your question, Skurj (great moniker, by the way) It’s the narrower scope of play options at a given moment. I was one of those chess players (having learned from my father) who would fight you tooth and nail for every pawn, and the tension would build on the board to the bursting point point until my opponent would be forced to “step on a mine.” If my opponent would not battle the “shield wall,” then I learned a “Blitzkrieg” attack that would decapitate through rapid slashing attacks that would descend quickly. Either way, the play options were narrow, focused, and ultimately play evolved with no sweep or wide scope.
GO, on the other hand, seemed closer to strategic moves across the steppes. The eye had to take in a wide expanse and the brain had to see and plan over a great deal of acreage. The difference in scope is that of a street fight (chess) vs a major campaign of army groups (GO). I really love the wider scope of GO.
That is also why I have never been drawn to 9 x 9 or 13 x 13.
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I don’t know a ton about Go yet, but my experience with musical instruments has me thinking chess is like guitar and Go is like piano.
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Being a musician myself (electric bass…like guitar, only cooler), I would say that’s a good analogy.
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So true. 
Maybe you never went for a huge furikawari? (For example, completely ignoring an opponent move that threatens to kill one of your groups, in order to make a move that threatens to completely destroy a vast amount of opponent territory). I think that would have a somewhat similar feel to what you describe.
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Long term “Positional” sacrifices instead are super common in go: Quite a bunch of common josekis involve sacrificing stones in the corner, in exchange for outside thickness, so those would be quite like typical pawn sacrifices that increase mobility / reduce opponent’s mobility.
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In one game I blew through my opponents line and grabbed a nice chunk around a corner that was a terrific rush. My attack, and the sharp response, reminded me of the whirlwind armor clashes that occurred in the North African Desert in WW-II. By the time it was over there were casualties on both sides, some nice real estate for me, and an alerted opponent who never let me have another break for the rest of the game.
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