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Chess, because there’s a horse :)

(/s; I’m sure they’re both fine, but I’ve never tried Go and don’t know how it works.)

Chess, because I’m biased and learned how to play that one first.

Go is probably better if you consider that chess has largely become a memorization game, while Go maintains a strong calculation focus even during the computer age.

I prefer Go because it has a nice typing system, has nice builtin tooling, and I’ve never heard of a language called Chess.

Go, mainly because I like larger scale board games (19x19 size). Go feels like fighting a war (macro) with many battles (micro) whereas Chess is fighting a single deciding battle. I do still like Chess though. They are different games. A lot more people have played Chess so here’s my sales pitch for Go:

The rules of Go is very simple, more simple than Chess. You can learn everything you need to start playing in under 10 minutes. Yet at the same time it can be incredibly more complex. But even at high ranks it’s extremely basic at its heart. I have a greater appreciation for Go pro players because the skill ceiling is seemingly infinite (at least from my perspective).

Every game of 19x19 Go is virtually unique. The amount of possible (legal) games of Go is ~2.082×10^170 which is something like this number:

208 168 199 381 979 984 699 478 633 344 862 770 286 522 453 884 530 548 425 639 456 820 927 419 612 738 015 378 525 648 451 698 519 643 907 259 916 015 628 128 546 089 888 314 427 129 715 319 317 557 736 620 397 247 064 840 935

For context that’s an order of magnitude more than Eddington’s number, the estimated number of protons in the observable universe.

As for the game; You have these isolated battles across the board which at first don’t amount to much until these battles begin influencing and spilling over one another. It’s a constant fight for territory. Then at the end stage of the game, everything links up and ‘front-lines’ are formed into a big picture when the victorious emerges. My favourite game is the Lee Sedol ladder game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6QerXttau8

It’s also just a beautiful looking game. Combined with the way the stones can feel (such as slate and shell stones), with the “proper” way of placing stones and the sound of the stone hitting the wood. Playing Go with someone IRL is its own experience.

As for the requirement of memorization to be good at the game, it’s true that some amount of studying is involved with learning sequences (Joseki). But you need way more game experience for that to be useful as you also need to build an intuition for an understanding of patterns. It’s similar to Chess in this regard, but more.

As for counting the points to determine a winner, there’s an easy trick. For Chinese rules, rearrange the shapes into squares and swap an equal amount of white and black stones. For Japanese rules, it’s the same except you’re swapping equal amount of empty space (territory). You can then easily count by using multiplication on nicer square shapes. The amount of points for each side won’t be affected.

I prefer Chess, but they’re both fantastic. The last couple of years, it really feels like Chess has shot back into the mainstream - and it’s exciting!

Do as the little girl in the taco commercial once said: why not have both?

Whichever one you like better

Alright, I’ll go against the grain and say that Go is the better game.

I’m not very good at Go, but I’ll always consider it the better game. It’s less about memorization and more about planning, adaptability, and intuition.

It has rules for handicap to allow inexperienced players to compete on a more even footing with experienced players.

The board can be scaled down for faster, more tactical experiences.

It has a 7.7 on boardgamegeek to chess’s 7.2.

Define “better”.

Of the two, probably Go because it’s easier to set up and modify. You can have Go games of several different sizes, and it can be drawn on paper if you need it to be. Though I also like the different variants of Chess that are not classic Chess. Not that it has never been hybridized; look up a game called Cho (have been asked to link in this manner, Google having more commonality I guess, questions didn’t seem welcome).

It’s going to be impossible to define “better” here because that’s a subjective opinion. But I will make a couple statements.

In most of the world, Chess is much more popular. However in China, Go is much more popular. In 1997 an AI manages to beat the Chess world champion for the first time. It wasn’t until 2016 that AI managed to beat the Go champion.

That implies that Go has more permutations and is a more “complex” type of game that is harder for computers to brute force. Does that make it better? Up to you.

I prefer Chess but likely just because I grew up playing it. If I were Chinese I would likely prefer Go. I’ve tried playing Go before but couldn’t get into it because I didn’t understand it fully.

Personally, I prefer Chess, but it’s for stupid reasons.

I like that there’s a variety of pieces, it’s easier to determine the winner, and it requires less fiddling around to play out a capturing move.

Go! Easier to learn, cheaper to play, and way more strategic.

Chess. Fight me.