Go is better than chess because

As a Chess players of 50 years, I can’t bring myself to say that Go is categorically better. They are both, imo, LIGHT YEARS better than any other game though.

I learned to pay Go decades ago, but every time I try to get into it, something in my personal life interrupts my learning and I have to start over a few years later, up until this last time. I’ve only played about 50 games of Go in my life, but I absolutely LOVE the game.

Chess is better than Go in that:

  1. More pieces afford a better opportunity to coordinate attacks.
  2. VASTLY more opportunities and learning materials, at least in the West, although the internet is changing that (YEA OGS!!!)
    3)Much easier to play a casual game, because of the sheer number of moves and time involved in Go.
    4)Chess is less abstract.

Go is better than Chess in that:
1)The coordination of different areas of the board, which can be switched in emphasis back and forth, makes the game continue to be engaging even if you’ve made a mistake in one area, you can often unite that are with another and bring life back into that part of the game.
2) The strategy (and tactics) of Go are unique among “war” games. Capturing is secondary. and there is no one winning goal (like the King in Chess) that you can focus on exclusively.
3)Go is more abstract.

Ok, I know I said both games are better because of their level of abstract thinking. I love both; depends on what kind of mood I’m in.
Both game are absolutely brilliant and great fun for someone who like to think.

About the way the initial question for this forum is phrased: I play a sport called Pickleball. It’s kind of like Tennis meets Ping Ping with a little bit of Chess strategy thrown in. It’s one of the fastest growing sports in the world. It takes faster reflexes, both with the hands and with movement, and more strategy that Tennis. We who play it, love the sport so much it’s hard to put it into words. Tennis players often watch the games on YouTube and proceed to explain why it’s a crummy sport and not fit for “real athletes”, because the balls and paddles are lighter, and you don’t have to run as mush as in Tennis. Still, Tennis players are flocking to Pickleball by the thousands every month. Discussions about which of two sports or games is better can be interesting as long as they are conducted by people who know and love both, but otherwise, they just seem defensive. Go players don’t have to convince anyone that GO is better than Chess, or vice versa. I wish the Tennis players who have never tried Pickleball would withhold their opinion until they’ve tried it. And I think my fellow Chess and Go players should try the other if they have not.

Which game(s) or sport(s) one prefers depends on what they like- how they like to test themselves.
I would be heartbroken if I couldn’t play both.

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…you can sit side by side with your partner/opponent and don‘t get confused by looking at the board from the „wrong“ side.

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looks like AI likes Go more than chess:

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I’m gonna strike an unconciliatory and unapologetic tone here but come at me chess players (its a go forum). Go is undeniably the better game from a game design perspective although ultimately it comes down to taste.

  1. Go has less rules and doesn’t have a bunch of dumb situational rules like chess.
  2. Go is way more likely to be actually balanced (i.e. black and white have equal chances of winning). This is especially true with integer komi or komi bidding.
  3. The overwhelming majority of Go games don’t end in a tie.
  4. Board size can be adjusted according to how long a game you feel like playing.
  5. At almost any point in the game there are more options/viable moves in Go than there are in chess.
  6. The chess community is a lot more splintered globally with different populations playing similar variants like Xiangqi, Jangqi, Shogi, etc. There is no game like Go and players worldwide can play each other with minor differences in rules not affecting this.

Seriously looking for someone to challenge me / fight me on this.

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You can preach to the choir or you can start a fight

but you can’t really do both at the same time ; )

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Since you want to be challenged on this, let me offer such a challenge.

Almost every ruleset that is being used in practice is actually full of dumb situational rules. The original rules as used in Japan, Korea and China in history, all suffer from ambiguity or allow highly complex paradoxical situations (there’s several threads about this, the main one about the Japanese linked by teapoweredrobot above).

There are the Tromp-Taylor Rules and the New Zealand rules on which they were based, which are unambiguous in a mathematical sense, but these aren’t the rules most people use when playing Go.

Well, without komi it seems not to be balanced, and in my personal opinion, komi is one of the “dumb situational rules” that makes the game purposefully asymmetric to keep things fair.

On the other hand, in chess there is no rule favouring either side, except for that one of the colours has to start first. Empirically, it seems that this usually leads to a draw, which is perfectly balanced.

Both chess (with the 50 move repetition rule) and Go (with any form of superko) are provably finite 2-player perfect information games, thus the game is decided (one player has a winning strategy, or both have a drawing strategy). There’s nothing “likely” about this either, it’s a general mathematical fact.

With integer komi, there exists a komi for which both players have a drawing strategy, which would make Go most “fair”, but empirically this komi seems to not be 0, which makes it rather arbitrary in a way. With non-integer komi, Go is provably unfair, even if you introduce komi bidding (which just means the player who can choose which colour to play last is the one who will have a winning strategy).

I don’t see how this doesn’t apply to chess, except that it’s quite unusual. To me, changing the board size significantly also feels quite different. A 9x9 game requires a very different kind of thinking than a 19x19 game.

There are a lot of options for variety in chess, with pieces that move in a different way than the standard way, or with different board sizes, or simply by playing with fewer pieces or in a different layout. The fact that several of these varieties have become very popular (e.g. the eastern variants), speaks for itself.

Such variants quickly seem contrived or unfair for Go.

This is a rather arbitrary point and does not at all decide how interesting a game is to play. As an example, consider playing Nim with millions of stacks of items, then you have literally millions of moves, yet there is quite an easy winning strategy, making it a rather boring game.

For something slightly more complex, consider Gomoku / 5-in-a-row on an infinite grid, where each player can only move, let’s say, 100 moves before the game becomes a tie. Then at any point in the game, there are literally an infinite number of possible moves, but the game is not really much more interesting than Gomoku on a usual finite grid of 19x19 would be.

There are far more chess players than there are Go players: it’s hard to find a Go player outside of East Asia. There are also far more Xiangqi players, and if restricting our attention to Japan, then there are far more Shogi players than Go players.

The fact that wherever you are on the world, it’s easier to find a game of chess or a chess variant, than to find a game of Go, tells me that Go is more “splintered” in the sense of it being hard to find someone to play with.

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To the contrary, everyone acts gangsta when they are surrounded by their homies.

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Thanks for humoring me.

Almost every ruleset that is being used in practice is actually full of dumb situational rules. The original rules as used in Japan, Korea and China in history, all suffer from ambiguity or allow highly complex paradoxical situations (there’s several threads about this, the main one about the Japanese linked by teapoweredrobot above).

I agree that a lot of the “mainstream” rulesets have dumb situational rules for paradoxical situations that appear in less than 1% of games – that’s why I am a NZ rules supremacist. All of these paradoxical situations don’t require dumb situational rules when using area scoring and superko. This is not a flaw of the game but a flaw of certain people to not adopt rulesets that easily take care of these paradoxical situations (i.e. Japanese and Korean rules should be extinct).

Well, without komi it seems not to be balanced, and in my personal opinion, komi is one of the “dumb situational rules” that makes the game purposefully asymmetric to keep things fair. On the other hand, in chess there is no rule favouring either side, except for that one of the colours has to start first. Empirically, it seems that this usually leads to a draw, which is perfectly balanced.

On the other hand, chess is just unbalanced for humans with white having a clear measurable advantage. Go has the advantage of being able to give a point value to going first to even things out, this is not possible in Chess and hence are stuck with a game that is unbalanced for humans.

Both chess (with the 50 move repetition rule) and Go (with any form of superko) are provably finite 2-player perfect information games, thus the game is decided (one player has a winning strategy, or both have a drawing strategy).

With chess, it is much more possible that white ultimately wins. With go, it is likely that for a given size board there exists an integer komi such that optimal play by both sides results in a draw, the mathematical definition of balance in a game of perfect information and no chance. If we take balance, Go is clearly superior.

This is a rather arbitrary point and does not at all decide how interesting a game is to play.

This is true, complexity / options by themselves do not decide how interesting the game is to play. I withdraw this point. Tic-tac-toe could be more interesting for a lot of people than either chess or Go even if its mathematically simpler, this all comes down to taste.

There are far more chess players than there are Go players: it’s hard to find a Go player outside of East Asia. There are also far more Xiangqi players, and if restricting our attention to Japan, then there are far more Shogi players than Go players.

Fair point, I withdraw my argument here as well.

Although you have some valid points, the strongest arguments for why Go is a better designed game than Chess remain:

  1. Go has simpler rules but strategy is mathematically more complex in a theoretical sense, in a practical sense both games are strategically complex enough to fully use the human brain.
  2. Go is much more likely than chess to be perfectly balanceable in a theoretical sense. In a practical/empirical sense looking at human play, chess is ridiculously imbalanced looking at winrates for black. The opposite is true for Go. From a game design perspective, balance is more important than perfect symmetry.
  3. Chess has ties resulting from a situation that is inconclusive (i.e. just repeats endlessly). Superko resolves this in Go. If you have a tie in Go (using the proper ruleset ; i.e. superko + perfect integer komi) one can conclusively say that the game is resolved and both players played equally well.

Ultimately, preferences are subjective and no one would be at fault for liking vanilla tic-tac-toe better than chess or go. From a game designers perspective, vanilla chess has a number of design flaws that are likely to be irremediable (primarily its imbalance, but also the prevalence of ties due to a circular board position).

I think any game designer without emotional attachment to either game would conclude that go is the better designed game.

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I will concede that the formulation of Go rules probably is mathematically possible with less information than the rules of chess. As far as whether strategy for Go is more complex than for chess, this depends on the definition of complexity being used. Mathematical complexity is hardly related to how interesting a game is to play, nor necessarily how interesting it is mathematically.

Go has some mathematical advantages in that its rules are simple enough to lead to interesting questions: there are in fact significant mathematical discoveries that have an origin in Go (in particular, the surreal numbers, and with it the entire field of combinatorial game theory, originated on a Go board, with the insight that endgame can be considered the direct sum of separate situations occurring on the board, and that each situation can be assigned a ‘numerical’ value of some sort, albeit with a rather broad conception of ‘numerical’).

However, from a mathematical perspective, I’d say that the rules of chess are rather cumbersome without offering more complexity than what simpler game like Go offer. But even Go is quite cumbersome. Mathematicians are happy to work with even simpler games, like Toads and Frogs, Hackenbush or aforementioned Nim. Such games are used to introduce mathematical concepts, but actual research is being done abstractly, without referring to specific games.

I concede that it’s harder to draw in Go than in chess, but a draw is not necessarily a bad feature in a game (in my personal opinion). That white has an advantage over black in chess is clear, but for absolute top level play (i.e. AI), the default result seems to be a draw, so I conjecture that under mathematically perfect play the outcome will be a draw as well. It’s hard to talk about likeliness of whether a game is balanced, or at least, I’m not sure what’s meant with something being “likely” here.

I don’t believe so. The goal of chess is to checkmate the other king. A tie is the result when both players agree that they have no way to checkmate the other king. It’s not inconclusive, the conclusion is that neither player feels confident enough that they can achieve the goal of the game.

This tacitly includes the situation of stalemate, since the player who stalemates the position wouldn’t do that if they believed there was a way to win the game without stalemating, an the player who cannot move is forced to agree that there is no way to win, since they got forced to go into a stalemate.

It would be inconclusive if one of the players feels there is a reason to keep playing, but this is quite rare in chess, since in general the 50 moves rule only would be evoked when there isn’t enough material on the board to be able to force an opponent into a checkmate (e.g. one king and a knight against another king generally cannot lead to a checkmate).


Invoking superko in order to capture something, in my opinion, feels more like a “cheat” to prevent infinite games than like a natural rule for Go. I’d rather play with a rule that allows infinite games, but where players are allowed to offer a draw. This way, if both players agree that they do not want to play anything other than the infinite loop, then they players will draw, and if either player believes there is a better option, they can go for that.

I personally prefer a draw for a triple ko, over one of the players having to reject playing the ko due to board repetition. But indeed, this is a matter of taste.

I believe the prevalence of ties is due to the length of the game. Chess games are essentially comparable to 9x9 Go if we look at length. Since this allows humans less opportunity to make mistakes, it more frequently will result in a draw. With 19x19 Go, there are more such opportunities, thus the end result has a broader distribution than with chess.

I’m confident to say that if professional players were to play only 9x9 Go with integer komi, that we’d see an advantage for Black (due to being able to steer the game with the initial moves into a direction that the Black player is comfortable with, similar to White in chess) and a very high number of draws.

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The way I see it:

Option 1: The game is anulled if it goes into a ko loop featuring more than X (in your case 3) kos.
Option 2: If playing a stone in a particular area of the board would cause a repeat of a previous board position, that move is illegal.

Option 1 arbitrarily set the simulataneous ko threshold at 3 stones and gives a player the option of annulling a game that may otherwise have a clear favored player if it were to be played out under superko.

Option 2 is universal and not arbitrary – and doesn’t give the option of forcing a triple ko to a player to annul a game.

I concede that it’s harder to draw in Go than in chess, but a draw is not necessarily a bad feature in a game (in my personal opinion)… I believe the prevalence of ties is due to the length of the game. Chess games are essentially comparable to 9x9 Go if we look at length. I’m confident to say that if professional players were to play only 9x9 Go with integer komi, that we’d see an advantage for Black (due to being able to steer the game with the initial moves into a direction that the Black player is comfortable with, similar to White in chess) and a very high number of draws.

I agree that draws are not necessarily a bad thing – the possibility of a draw is necessary for a game to be considered mathematically balanced for a full information no luck turn based game. With respect to tying in 9x9 professional play – this can be empirically disproven. Looking at game histories of the top ranked players in GoQuest (i.e. ELOs in the mid 2000s, some of which are confirmed pros) (which I may add is based on area scoring and integer komi of 7 which is believed to be the “perfect” komi based on AI), the prevalence of draws for these top level players is a single digit % of total games, a far cry from the draw rate amongst high level chess players.

I conjecture that under mathematically perfect play the outcome will be a draw as well. It’s hard to talk about likeliness of whether a game is balanced, or at least, I’m not sure what’s meant with something being “likely” here.

Its possible that its a draw. Its also possible that its a win for white. If we are making conjectures we can say that it is far more likely that with komi bidding that the outcome of perfect play in Go for a 19x19 board is a draw. If we leave theory and delve into the realm of humans its obvious that chess is an incredibly lopsided game, which is why many professionals of chess have suggested reform of the rules or moving to variants to fix the high stalemate rate or the imbalanced win rates of white. I’m not aware of any Go pro arguing today for moving to a radically different variant of the game on account of imbalance and high draw rates.

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There are some variants of superko (Superko at Sensei's Library). Which variant is universal and not arbitrary? You say you are a NZ rules supremacist, but NZ rules use the SSK variant, while your description under option 2 seems more like the PSK variant.

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Not just a cheat, but a rule that makes the game mostly unplayable on a real board. How are you supposed to remember all past positions? (To be fair, I do also find it hard to avoid illegal moves in chess.)

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There are some variants of superko (Superko at Sensei’s Library ). Which variant is universal and not arbitrary? You say you are a NZ rules supremacist, but NZ rules use the SSK variant, while your description under option 2 seems more like the PSK variant.

Fair point here – actually, I prefer PSK, which is not the default for NZ. I don’t fully understand situations in which PSK and SSK differ in practice (I guess maybe related to the fact that NZ allows for suicide), but in practice I am agnostic to PSK or SSK provided that neither of them result in a situation where a game is annulled due to being stuck in repetition. I do think PSK is more elegant though, so it would be my default preference.

How are you supposed to remember all past positions?

It is definitely difficult, but it definitely isn’t above human capability for strong players that have the ability to memorize entire games. Complexity shouldn’t be an excuse for not having a complete and coherent ruleset. By complete ruleset I mean a ruleset that doesn’t give a player the option to annul a game by setting up complicated kos.

With software as a referee it is very easy to prevent this from happening on any serious competition. It is so rare though in an actual game (I’ve played 1000s of games in my life and don’t think I have ever come across this situation) that it doesn’t matter in practice and is basically a moot point when trying to argue that there are paradoxical situations in go that result in annulment.

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An often used argument in favour of superko is that it’s simple. I’d argue that a rule that’s easy to explain to a beginner, but almost impossible to implement by a beginner, is not in fact simple. It’s fake simplicity.

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Somehow the “Go is better than chess” has devolved now into “Go is better than Go”.
Therefore, I hereby claim that No-pass Atari Go is the only natural ruleset that really exists.

6nd08t

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I’d argue that a rule that’s easy to explain to a beginner, but almost impossible to implement by a beginner, is not in fact simple. It’s fake simplicity.

The only circumstance under which the technicality of simple ko versus superko matters is under a serious match for rank/honor/money. Arguing that superko is worse than simple ko because beginners might struggle to implement it is not a good argument in my opinion. For casual at home games, people should play under whichever rules are most convenient for the players – situations in which the technicality of simple versus super ko are relevant are likely less than 1 in 10,000 (I’ve played over 5000 games in my life and have yet to encounter this situation).

On a serious game for money/rank/honor, an annulment should only occur if both players agree – a single player should not be able to annul a game by setting up a complex ko if his/her opponent is not willing to back down.

It’s suprisingly difficult to force an annulment by triple ko against strong players. Many OGS games that are annulled by triple ko are cases of unforced triple kos, meaning that one player can break the cycle (give up the triple ko) and still win. In many cases, it’s a mistake for the leading player to stubbornly maintain the cycle and consequently not win the game.

Having a rule that voids games with long cycles just gives fallible human players more rope to hang themselves, by “punishing” the mistake of persisting an unnecessary cycle. I think this is similar to “punishing” unnecessary moves past the natural end of the game, by having such moves lose points under Japanese rules.

Japanese (or similar) rules leave more to the skill (or lack thereof) of the players, instead of having a quirky rule with different obscure variants, that may or may not allow some recapture (often feeling random and/or unwarranted to me).

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wait, really?
topic name changed instead of separating it?

that one is next?


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