• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Chess, Othello, Go, or other?

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

CavemanLawyer

Member
Since recently graduating college I have been seeking some new hobbies. I've really enjoyed running and hiking, but I need something that taps into my inner nerd. So for the past week I have had this sudden strange urge to pick up a board game.

The three I have been looking at in particular are Chess, Othello, and Go. I have a very primitive understanding of each game. I know the rules but anything touching basic strategy is where I bail out. I want to find my niche game that I can become halfway decent at over the 6 months - a year.

I have already sampled each of these games a bit and I find all the games entertaining. Is there one in particular that holds up better in entertainment value over the long term? A game that gives a deeper satisfaction when a strategy you have been working on finally pays off? Or are they on pretty equal levels and I should just pick one and start playing?

It is my understanding that these 3 games fit under the easy to learn, incredibly difficult to master, which is exactly what I'm looking for and I fully expect to lose A LOT in the early going.

So GAF, what do you play (feel free to mention something outside the 3)? Do you recommend it, and how did you get started and advance from noob to at least halfway decent?
 
Go.

Read this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0964479613/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Play online with people here:

http://www.gokgs.com/

After about a hundred games or so, read this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/4906574289/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Do these when you're bored:

http://www.goproblems.com/

You'll be good at it in no time.

If you want a more tangible strategy game, try the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kits (you said mention what I play, and this is what I play). The scenario cards give you tons of replayability, just enough luck to keep things interesting, but tons of tactical choices to let you make up clever strategies.

2qmovo5.jpg


http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9823

Here's a taste of the kind of games that happen.

I was playing the third starter kit with my mom this weekend. I have to control some buildings on the other side of the map. My Russian tanks are obviously no match for her German Tiger, so I ram my tanks into the buildings and keep them there. There's a possibility of them getting stuck (and a penalty for changing their direction), but since I'm not going anywhere, it doesn't matter. Two turns from the end of the game, I get a lucky shot on her Tiger and destroy it (although not before sending a couple infantry squads to attack it, which end up getting broken by its nahverteidigungswaffe). Her infantry move in to reclaim the only building left that I need to capture, and as I try to get another tank shot in at the infantry, my first tank misses and the other tank's main gun malfunctions.

Now I make a last ditch effort to reclaim the building in close combat. I start moving my squads in, but every one of them gets broken and routs. I have one leader who, despite being wounded twice, keeps moving forward with his light machine gun (Rambo style) and manages to get in the building, only to be killed by the remaining infantry.

Oh well.
 
Go is the simplest but also the deepest game. I would imagine simply due to the sheer volume of games that can be played, it would be the most rewarding over the long term.
 
I don't have much to contribute other than an amusing story about chess.
When I was 12 we were living in Nepal and since my mother is a rock collector, we decided to go as a family to an area in the himalayas that was rich in minerals. We drove up in our landcruiser as far as we could before hitting an area where the snow was too deep to proceed. So we all got out and hoofed it up through the snow for several hours to a mining camp. During the night, a blizzard struck and nearly killed us all in our tents while we slept. Luckily one of the guides woke up and knocked all the snow off that was piling up on top of the tents.
So we end up stuck in this run down mining camp where the only other foreigner is this drunk Russian guy who speaks broken english and has an old worn down chess board. He ends up teaching me to play chess to pass the time.
So basically when people ask me how I learnt to play chess, I get to say a drunk Russian in the himalyas during a blizzard taught me.
 
Chess - Probably most popular. Most people know how to play it. You'd probably be pretty respected if you're the best among your friends. My least favorite of the three.

Go - Best game of the three. Might be hard to find people that know how to play it in real life. Hard to learn in my opinion. One of the best strategy board games in my opinion, but I like Othello more for personal reasons.

Othello - My personal favorite. I find it ridiculously hard to find people to play this with, but it's very easy to teach. Easy game to pick up and play, and get good at. Strategy is kept minimal. The reason I like it is because it's so simple, and that I started playing this on my gameboy when I was really young.

I'd go with Go. (Pun totally intentional)
 
numble said:
This is a pretty good board game.

GRaFa.jpg
Click to expand...


How does that game actually operate? Do you just advance according to the dice and hope someone is in the position to be trapped?

I miss Othello.

pTRUCA1-3664691reg.jpg


Such a classy looking game.
 
Mancala is bewitchingly good.

I understand it is on computers, but the tactile joy of playing with real pieces is immense.
 
Chess is a fun game to play. The Chess game that comes with Windows Vista/Windows 7 is pretty challenging at the higher difficulties, and should keep it entertaining. I'll usually play one or two times a week to stay sharp... you never know when those chess skillz might impress teh ladies :lol

Othello is pretty fun too, but I much prefer chess seeing as how I'm better at it. It's also considered the more "strategical" game. You won't see street performers in an urban area setting up Othello games, but you will see chess.

On that note... speed chess is ****ing hard.





I haven't played Go.
 
I'd look into Magic: The Gathering. It's a much deeper game than any of those three. There are over 15,000 pieces (cards), with about 800 new ones printed every year. The strategy element is at least as deep as chess, and there's also a bluffing aspect akin to poker.

It is more expensive to get started in, and get good at, than the other three, though, so if that's a concern, you may want to pass on Magic.
 
ThLunarian said:
I'd look into Magic: The Gathering. It's a much deeper game than any of those three. There are over 15,000 pieces (cards), with about 800 new ones printed every year. The strategy element is at least as deep as chess, and there's also a bluffing aspect akin to poker.

It is more expensive to get started in, and get good at, than the other three, though, so if that's a concern, you may want to pass on Magic.
Click to expand...

You don't know know much about Chess or Go.

Even though Magic has that many cards, there is a small subset of "good" cards, and a small subset of "good" decks. Alot of the strategy is in deck building, and a lot of people just copy other people's decks. During gameplay, you are limited to the number of cards in your hand as to what move you can make next. In Chess, there are often more possibilities per turn than there are cards in a whole Magic deck (although the average number of moves is 37). In Go, you are only limited by the open spaces on the board, where there are 361 spaces to start with.
 
ThLunarian said:
I'd look into Magic: The Gathering. It's a much deeper game than any of those three. There are over 15,000 pieces (cards), with about 800 new ones printed every year. The strategy element is at least as deep as chess, and there's also a bluffing aspect akin to poker.

It is more expensive to get started in, and get good at, than the other three, though, so if that's a concern, you may want to pass on Magic.
Click to expand...

:lol

There are more moves in Go than the number of atoms in the universe.
 
I'm another one for Go. Played it off and on for years and used to have a goban of my own until I moved and it got lost somehow along the way. It's extremely fun and a challenging game to master. There's so many possible moves that there's no two games played the same way in any of the records. And the records go back to quite a long time ago.

You'll stumble a bit at first but once you get the hang of it you'll find it to be very rewarding. I've played on KGS quite a bit and once you get decent you can even hire a tutor on there to give you weekly or monthly lessons (and some people will hold free sessions to tutor groups of people).

However, as others have said, it's generally hard to find someone to play with IRL. I've found very few and the ones I have played with just didn't seem to "get" it. When I was in college there was a small Go club I was part of. I remember playing this guy and he beat me pretty badly the first game. So, he gave me one more handicap stone for the next game and I demolished him (he made too many mistakes that time; it really wasn't the stone that made the difference) and he got pissy as all hell. So, watch out for people like that; there's some sore losers out there both online and offline :P
 
ianp622 said:
You don't know know much about Chess or Go.

Even though Magic has that many cards, there is a small subset of "good" cards, and a small subset of "good" decks. Alot of the strategy is in deck building, and a lot of people just copy other people's decks. During gameplay, you are limited to the number of cards in your hand as to what move you can make next. In Chess, there are often more possibilities per turn than there are cards in a whole Magic deck (although the average number of moves is 37). In Go, you are only limited by the open spaces on the board, where there are 361 spaces to start with.
Click to expand...


Even if you only count "good" cards as ones that have appeared in decks capable of winning tournaments, there are still well over 1000 of those (that's a rough estimate, and probably a conservative one). There are also easily hundreds of decks that have made it to the Top 8 of a major tournament. Then you consider that there are multiple formats to master, some of which allow any card ever printed, some which require you to receive cards and build your deck on the fly, and some which only allow cards printed in the past few years.

Part of the complexity of Magic is playing enough to learn what the "good" cards are, why they're "good", and what combination to play them in. This branches off into deckbuilding theory that includes high concepts such as card advantage, tempo, playing the role of beatdown versus the role of controlling the game, and the 'Fundamental Turn'.

While you're correct that many people copy decks, there are many more people (not just tournament players - there are also people who play casually, take pride in their own decks, and actively SHUN the idea of copying someone else's deck) that like the challenge and excitement of building their own.

Moreover, your choices during a game are not just limited to the cards in your hand. Even just assuming your board consists of lands and creatures with no abilities, every single turn, you face the questions of when to attack, which creatures to attack with, which lands to use to play your spells, which spells to play and in what order, and how these actions might change based on what's in your opponent's hand ("If I try to Giant Growth my creature and he has a kill spell for it, I lose. But if I use this other spell to make him discard the kill spell, I won't have enough damage to kill him until next turn, and what if he has something else in hand that will kill me on his turn? I only have the mana to play one of my spells... what should I do?").

When you start adding in creatures with abilities, enchantments and artifacts with both constant and activated abilities, and cards that allow you to search your library for another particular card ("what card do I get? What if my opponent has X? Maybe I should get something else instead..."), a game of Magic can easily require more decisions, with more ramifications, than a full chess board.

You are correct that I don't know much about Go, and maybe I shouldn't have compared Magic to it. I have, however, played a lot of chess, and am very confident in saying that Magic is by far the more complex game.

(sorry for the small novel here; I'm pretty passionate about Magic, as you can tell :D )
 
watervengeance said:
:lol

There are more moves in Go than the number of atoms in the universe.
Click to expand...
Go is less of a game than it is a. . . something I don't know the word for. But it's not something I think you can do casually and get any enjoyment out of.
 
ThLunarian said:
Even if you only count "good" cards as ones that have appeared in decks capable of winning tournaments, there are still well over 1000 of those (that's a rough estimate, and probably a conservative one). There are also easily hundreds of decks that have made it to the Top 8 of a major tournament. Then you consider that there are multiple formats to master, some of which allow any card ever printed, some which require you to receive cards and build your deck on the fly, and some which only allow cards printed in the past few years.

Part of the complexity of Magic is playing enough to learn what the "good" cards are, why they're "good", and what combination to play them in. This branches off into deckbuilding theory that includes high concepts such as card advantage, tempo, playing the role of beatdown versus the role of controlling the game, and the 'Fundamental Turn'.

While you're correct that many people copy decks, there are many more people (not just tournament players - there are also people who play casually, take pride in their own decks, and actively SHUN the idea of copying someone else's deck) that like the challenge and excitement of building their own.

Moreover, your choices during a game are not just limited to the cards in your hand. Even just assuming your board consists of lands and creatures with no abilities, every single turn, you face the questions of when to attack, which creatures to attack with, which lands to use to play your spells, which spells to play and in what order, and how these actions might change based on what's in your opponent's hand ("If I try to Giant Growth my creature and he has a kill spell for it, I lose. But if I use this other spell to make him discard the kill spell, I won't have enough damage to kill him until next turn, and what if he has something else in hand that will kill me on his turn? I only have the mana to play one of my spells... what should I do?").

When you start adding in creatures with abilities, enchantments and artifacts with both constant and activated abilities, and cards that allow you to search your library for another particular card ("what card do I get? What if my opponent has X? Maybe I should get something else instead..."), a game of Magic can easily require more decisions, with more ramifications, than a full chess board.

You are correct that I don't know much about Go, and maybe I shouldn't have compared Magic to it. I have, however, played a lot of chess, and am very confident in saying that Magic is by far the more complex game.

(sorry for the small novel here; I'm pretty passionate about Magic, as you can tell :D )
Click to expand...

All of those things you mentioned are parts of many card games, and I've played many, including Magic. While it seems like you have more decisions to make than in Chess, it's really only because your available choices are more apparent. In Chess and Go, there are many factors that you have to take into account that you don't learn unless you study it.
 
ThLunarian said:
Even if you only count "good" cards as ones that have appeared in decks capable of winning tournaments, there are still well over 1000 of those (that's a rough estimate, and probably a conservative one). There are also easily hundreds of decks that have made it to the Top 8 of a major tournament. Then you consider that there are multiple formats to master, some of which allow any card ever printed, some which require you to receive cards and build your deck on the fly, and some which only allow cards printed in the past few years.

Part of the complexity of Magic is playing enough to learn what the "good" cards are, why they're "good", and what combination to play them in. This branches off into deckbuilding theory that includes high concepts such as card advantage, tempo, playing the role of beatdown versus the role of controlling the game, and the 'Fundamental Turn'.

While you're correct that many people copy decks, there are many more people (not just tournament players - there are also people who play casually, take pride in their own decks, and actively SHUN the idea of copying someone else's deck) that like the challenge and excitement of building their own.

Moreover, your choices during a game are not just limited to the cards in your hand. Even just assuming your board consists of lands and creatures with no abilities, every single turn, you face the questions of when to attack, which creatures to attack with, which lands to use to play your spells, which spells to play and in what order, and how these actions might change based on what's in your opponent's hand ("If I try to Giant Growth my creature and he has a kill spell for it, I lose. But if I use this other spell to make him discard the kill spell, I won't have enough damage to kill him until next turn, and what if he has something else in hand that will kill me on his turn? I only have the mana to play one of my spells... what should I do?").

When you start adding in creatures with abilities, enchantments and artifacts with both constant and activated abilities, and cards that allow you to search your library for another particular card ("what card do I get? What if my opponent has X? Maybe I should get something else instead..."), a game of Magic can easily require more decisions, with more ramifications, than a full chess board.

You are correct that I don't know much about Go, and maybe I shouldn't have compared Magic to it. I have, however, played a lot of chess, and am very confident in saying that Magic is by far the more complex game.

(sorry for the small novel here; I'm pretty passionate about Magic, as you can tell :D )
Click to expand...
Tthe great thing about chess is the depth and strategy involved with only six types of pieces. By your logic chess would be a better game if the board were 800x800 squares and had 70 different types of pieces.
 
ianp622 said:
All of those things you mentioned are parts of many card games, and I've played many, including Magic. While it seems like you have more decisions to make than in Chess, it's really only because your available choices are more apparent. In Chess and Go, there are many factors that you have to take into account that you don't learn unless you study it.
Click to expand...
Now I'm not going to defend the idea that Magic is more complex than Go or Chess, but the bold is pure ignorance.
Plus the whole "complex is better" or whatever you guys are trying to argue about is just wankery anyway.
 
Ludi said:
.
Click to expand...
I'd really like a good explanation of this. I've been taught the game prior, I've tried playing it. It just numbs my mind. Turns take forever never mind the actual games. Where does the love come from?
 
I don't remember where this was, but I remember a poll conducted on Magic's official website in one of the columns where the writer asked, if two top-level players faced off with balanced decks, and one player had perfect information while the other did not, how much more the advantaged player would win. I think the generally-agreed-on ratio was 70:30. What I'm trying to say is that while Magic is a very strategic game, most matches are won or lost before the game starts, either with deckbuilding or luck of the draw. Deckbuilding is a deep and rewarding process, but it's still not exactly comparable to Chess or Go.

I have much more experience with Chess than with Go, but if I were to weigh the pros and cons, I'd say that Go is much deeper (and the elegance is rather stunning), while Chess is more approachable, in that more people you meet will know how to play, and it will be easier to find games. Given that you're rather unlikely to reach the limits of either game, I'd personally pick Chess, but I'm slightly biased by my own experience. I sort of wish I knew Go better.

A deep turn-based board game like Go or Chess really teaches you how to concentrate in ways that few other tasks require.
 
RevenantKioku said:
Now I'm not going to defend the idea that Magic is more complex than Go or Chess, but the bold is pure ignorance.
Plus the whole "complex is better" or whatever you guys are trying to argue about is just wankery anyway.
Click to expand...

Really? Don't most tournament decks have a single goal that you work towards? Aren't you trying to accomplish this goal as soon as possible? In all the card games I've played, you stick with the strategy you created with your deck and only deviate in minor ways to account for an opponent's moves. If an opponent has a card that ruins your strategy, you're dead. In chess, your strategy is always changing, so moves that might have been poor before could become good.

Also, I love when people on forums say discussions are stupid. Why do you care what we talk about? We're not even trying to say one is better than the other, we're just comparing depth of strategy. Advanced Squad Leader is my favorite game, and the rules are complex, but I wouldn't say that it's more complex than Go. That doesn't make me like it any less.

RevenantKioku said:
I'd really like a good explanation of this. I've been taught the game prior, I've tried playing it. It just numbs my mind. Turns take forever never mind the actual games. Where does the love come from?
Click to expand...

You start out intrigued, then you're not sure what the fuss is about strategy, and then when you start to see patterns you get hooked.
 
I'm like that minor character in Hikaru no Go who tries and fails to join Hikaru's former midschool Go club. No matter how much I play, I never improve.
 
RevenantKioku said:
I'd really like a good explanation of this. I've been taught the game prior, I've tried playing it. It just numbs my mind. Turns take forever never mind the actual games. Where does the love come from?
Click to expand...

I don't know Go well in particular, but I could imagine the same complaints applied to Chess. It's all about understanding the patterns and possibilities.

Once you start to really understand the game, and can figure out how to determine which moves are good, and can figure out how to read your opponent's tactics and plan ahead, an unlimited universe of possibility opens up, and you don't have enough time during your opponent's turns to figure out everything you will do after he makes his move. It becomes a tightrope battle of wits where a single mistake can cost a player the entire match.

It can be very exciting, stimulating, and exhausting.
 
ianp622 said:
Really? Don't most tournament decks have a single goal that you work towards? Aren't you trying to accomplish this goal as soon as possible? In all the card games I've played, you stick with the strategy you created with your deck and only deviate in minor ways to account for an opponent's moves. If an opponent has a card that ruins your strategy, you're dead. In chess, your strategy is always changing, so moves that might have been poor before could become good.
Click to expand...
Uh, don't chess and go have a single goal that you work towards? Winning?
But no, good tournament decks run nothing like that. Maybe beginner players play like that but a high level player wouldn't. Flexibility to be able to change your stratigies is a must. Now, I'd say it is definitely more of micro-strategies than macro-strategies that change but there should be no reason a good player can't play around something that ruins their strategy. There is also a poker like element of reading people as well. It's really a mix of a lot of things it's not entirely fair to compare the two types of games.

Also, I love when people on forums say discussions are stupid. Why do you care what we talk about? We're not even trying to say one is better than the other, we're just comparing depth of strategy. Advanced Squad Leader is my favorite game, and the rules are complex, but I wouldn't say that it's more complex than Go. That doesn't make me like it any less.
Click to expand...
Some discussions are stupid, yes. I care because I want everyone to be better people.

You start out intrigued, then you're not sure what the fuss is about strategy, and then when you start to see patterns you get hooked.
Click to expand...
I asked about Go specifically, not "shit in general."
 
Classical board games like Chess and Go has a very basic set of rules and the complexity of the game lies moreso on the number of moves you can make on the board at a given time and the wide range possibilities that you can see and calculate if you are capable and wish to do so.

Competitive card games like Magic The Gathering operates on one part of deck building by which you use to produce an effective strategy while minimizing the luck required to execute it, and the other part on knowing how to use more complicated sets of rules to your advantage along with the possible cards and strategies your opponent may use in a game. The luck aspect is there in Magic, but good players will plan with it in mind and bad players only say lol luck, some pro players have won multiple tournaments in a row and there's clearly more than dumb luck in play.


They are similar in that you need to plan out your moves and know the moves your opponent may pull on you, but the similarities end there and different skills are required. Not to mention unless you have all the resources available to you, getting the cards you need by trading and bargaining using only what you have is another aspect of Magic altogether. Apple and Oranges people.
 
CavemanLawyer said:
It is my understanding that these 3 games fit under the easy to learn, incredibly difficult to master, which is exactly what I'm looking for and I fully expect to lose A LOT in the early going.
Click to expand...
Othello is probably the weakest of the three. There's not really much to do once you get to a certain point. It's just capture the corners and you're done.

Chess, there's plenty of room to grow.

Go is so freaking weird they can't even code a decent AI for it yet.
 
Go is crazy in that the game is very open ended, and it becomes more open ended as more moves are played (on the contrary, most board games become simpler as the game goes on). There are very few limitations on legal moves by the rules of the game, and the symmetry of board positions breaks down easily.

The additive nature of the game, and the focus on building and settling groups of stones to secure areas of the board (instead of capturing a particular game piece(s) like in other games) as territory, results in a very abstract game that can be quite overwhelming for inexperienced players.
 
Of the three mentioned I only play chess. Not that I'm good at it. Thanks for letting me know that there was a chess that comes with Windows. Pretty awesome. Expect I'll be playing more now.
Also, Go. I think I want to learn that but I'm not sure where to start.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Other than gaming, what’s your other big hobby?
2
92
2K
xrnzaaas replied
Your go too treatment?
36
2K
mitch1971 replied
Monkey's Magic Merry Go Around Trailer
3
236
jason10mm replied
How long did you date your significant other before you proposed/got proposed to?
11
441
poodaddy replied
🏎️ F1 2026 - let's go!!!
2 3 4
198
4K
deriks replied
Top Bottom