What I noticed after playing 2 days of GO, and then going back to chess for a few hours

General Go Discussion
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So the Site has been a bit down lately, the last 12 hours or so. And about 2 days go I got fairly hooked on this game. I’m really bad at it, haven’t won a single match. But anyway since this place has been down I went to go play some chess, and the results quite frankly were astounding. I’v gone 100 points up in skill level, and I’m not even pushing myself. I mean I’m not even trying to win but I’m just easily beating people up in chess like it’s nothing. I don’t even have to fully engage my brain with the chess board anymore.

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I guess after winning your first go game you’ll be crushing chess engines like they are running on ZX Spectrum. You certainly have a vivid imagination. :slight_smile:

Well, temporarily switching to another game might help one to break through mental blocks or something, but other than that I do not see how playing go can dramatically improve your chess, giving that your are a strong chess player already.

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For what it’s worth, the guy who taught me to play go was a chess player before he learned go. He said that playing go improved his chess playing. (It didn’t seem to help mine, though.)

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I’m not saying it can’t. Studying go (or chess for that matter) deeply can positively affect your approach to all kinds of other activities. The emphasis was on “dramatically”. A couple of days over goban and suddenly your mind is so expanded you’re a chess champion? Let me remain a skeptic. :slight_smile:

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Interestingly enough, I played go exclusively for a long time (half a year or more). And after that returning to chess was painful. My brain completely readjusted itself for playing go, and reading variations of moving chess pieces became much harder. However, my approach to game changed also, and probably after practice skill would go up.

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I similarly improved at Chess. Go taught me to simply develop the strength of my position rather than try to force through.

I guess I’d been playing aggressively for years without realising that I could just build a base and exploit the cut points my opponents leave behind.

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I also sucked at chess after playing a lot of go for a few months. I didn’t play many games so maybe after readjusting I would be better than before, but for now I noticed myself overlooking things left and right because I was thinking about the pieces as identical and stationary, lol. my 2 cents

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