I don’t know if this is always true, but I share this perception. I went to a chess tournament with a friend when I was about 12 and lost a game against an asshole who beat me in two or three moves. Not that I resent him for winning, but he looked so bored and smug, didn’t even look at me once and went away right after beating me. Then he and another girl spent the evening laughing at me while I played badly against another opponent. And the whole atmosphere was rather unpleasant. Never played chess again. I always tell people who occasionally ask me to play that I find the rules too complex and can’t figure how to play, but your comment made me think that that’s an excuse. It just gives me bad vibes since then.
On the other side, go community looks (and again, I’m not making assumptions about chess players, it’s just my perception) more open and welcoming. I had doubts even about this game because I thought board games were not for me, but I found less pressure here about not looking stupid when playing.
I attribute the difference to the celebrity of chess. More or less everybody knows the rules, and everybody knows the game. So if you’re good at chess you’re more likely to boast about it than you are with Go, because people already know what you’re talking about. With Go it’s different, most of the time you have to explain what that is and this is what often might lead to teaching it.
Both Go and Chess have communities around them, that develop their own idiosyncrasies. It’s like two different cultures.
I’d argue that Go obnoxiousness looks different than Chess obnoxiousness. However, those people that go around with “I beat you at X therefore I’m smarter™ & better” are, you know, obnoxious everywhere. In my opinion that kind of includes “My game is better than yours.”
EDIT: They are also wrong, which I forgot to mention
Only one kind of piece. Put it anywhere you want. Much easier to get into than 6 kinds of pieces, all move in different specific ways, and they have to start in a certain arbitrary arrangement. It’s less natural feeling. Go feels very natural, like a game of tag. Very simple, natural easy to understand rules.
And because chess has more rules it feels more restrictive. Like playing tag with your ankles shackled together. It’s just a very frustrating game for me. I hate it. In go you have more freedom to do whatever you want.
Ok I did exaggerate a bit saying popularity doesn’t matter at all. It does yes but it’s not sufficient, and my answer was concerning some misconception about what you can find in east and west.
The situation in your country looks a bit depressing, sorry, I know more about Germany, France, Swiss and Netherland.
If you have the money and time, you can play a tournament every weekend of the year between these 4 countries. You never do that in China.
Back on topic, I’m no chess player but I had chance to teach weiqi to a few strong chess players and from their own words they like most in go was
1 The use of intuition early, avoiding the books of opening for chess
They said intuition still exists in the middle game in chess, but almost disappeared in the opening, it was mainly a library fight
2 The open minded and friendly ambiance, not to mention the free and convivial teaching in go which is strongly opposed in their chess club (already said before)
Saying that chess is less complex for human as go is still a bit stupid (like the reverse too ofc) because I can’t estimate how much the different pieces and their (different) movement make it harder for a human and this is in balance with the pure combinatoric, giving an advantage for weiqi on the other side.
It’s something I still don’t understand. Netherland was the leader in go in Europe. Players said these people know how it is important to focuse on children teaching. Then they got Schlemper a dominating master secretly trained in Japan, they got the European Go Center…
What happened later?
60s to 80s around. R Schlemper won European championship many times then. The EGC was a kind of aknowledgement too, investment made by the Japanese federation.
I don’t know if it’s a Go thing or an OGS thing, but it’s always a pleasant surprise when I’m going my merry way (walking into an atari) and some kind stranger jumps out of nowhere to offer advice. And I don’t mean people I’ve exchanged one greeting or ten with, I mean people who had no better use of their time than to spend it to help out a stranger become better to something they both enjoy.
Happens quite often. They gain nothing other than good karma. Some people thing that’s enough, I guess?
There are things more complex for a human as for a computer in chess: movements and different pieces.
(Besides pure combinatoric)
To compare complexity you need to measure these, not only the number of positions on a board.
