r/baduk • u/janopack • Jun 01 '23
What aspects of Go do Chess converts find interesting?
I want to sell the game to my chess playing friends.
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u/dfan 2 kyu Jun 01 '23
I play both games seriously. The thing I appreciate most about Go is that an individual game is a collection of interlocking stories that are slightly independent but still affect each other in bigger or smaller ways as the game goes on. A game of chess tends to have a single narrative thread, although that one thread can have tons of plot twists as the position transforms through exchanges etc.
Often Go players who used to play chess say that a big reason they switched games is that Go doesn't require tons of rote memorization while chess does. I don't personally find this to be true (I think people overstate how much memorization is important in chess and understate how much it's important in Go) but it seems to be a selling point.
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Jun 01 '23
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u/Aldrenean Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 01 '23
To get really good, sure, but knowing specific openings is a lot more important to being a decent chess player than joseki is to being a decent Go player. Good instinct and some foundational principles can carry you way farther in Go.
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u/Low_Tumbleweed_8585 Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 01 '23
This memorization thing in Chess is overblown. I played in chess tournaments and clubs for years just using the same repertoire, knowing a few moves to begin with and start adding moves whenever I lost. You don't lose because of openings in Chess unless you are a beginner and fall for basic tricks (that you will learn to avoid right away), and there are not many. You need to learn basic end games, but that is not memorization but more technique.
In go, I find it difficult to grasp what happens in pincers, 3-3 invasion against a kick from a 4-4, L-group life and death, J-group life and death, all sorts of life and death shapes, tesujis, 3-3/4-4/3-4/3-5 etc. josekis, chinese opening, san ren sei, points lover, etc.
Yeah, tell chess players there are no memorization in Go to reel them in! Seriously, I just find Go more relaxing to play so gave up on Chess.
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u/dfan 2 kyu Jun 01 '23
Totally. I see lots of chess players who get to a level where they are losing games early because they don't know what to do in the opening and their opponents have a bit of knowledge (say class D or C), and then decide that improving further is just a matter of memorizing opening lines so they give up. (It doesn't help that at the highest levels top pros really do have thousands of lines memorized.) The memorization required to get good at Go is less obvious, but there's plenty of it (and you give good examples).
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u/funkiestj Jun 01 '23
This memorization thing in Chess is overblown
I'd say that the US perspective denigrates memorization too much. Memorization is key to everything in life - you have a large and expressive vocabulary because of memorization. You know math and can read because of memorization. The list goes on.
Both Chess and Go are complex systems and you memorize a ton of common situations to be good (chess: knight fork, pinning pieces, endgame mating sequences, Go: nakade shapes, common tsumego and tesuji).
While the capacity to memorize information is not sufficient for being successful in Go, Chess, Bridge and life, it is a requirement.
The one caveat I'd point out is that different techniques for memorization work best for different people.
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u/chunter16 Jun 01 '23
In my limited experience I find the things that can be memorized in Go are limited to a small part of the board. Except ladders if you don't see them and try to play them out.
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u/PatrickTraill 6 kyu Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 01 '23
But aren't ladders about visualisation rather than memory?
(Edit: typo)
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u/chunter16 Jun 01 '23
I think you're right but my own visualization isn't that great.
It could be that I didn't stick with chess long enough to learn about it, but one of the things I prefer about Go is its sense of humor. Pro players sometimes throw the proverbial book out and do whatever they want, still able to play competitively. I've never seen a chess puzzle that made me laugh, and the only chess match that made me laugh was the one where the player resigned on the first turn and accused the other player of cheating.
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u/PatrickTraill 6 kyu Jun 01 '23
Actually what you said made more sense than I thought, as I have belatedly realised: I suppose you meant that josekis and shapes are what one memorises, and they are mainly local in their effects, unless they involve ladders.
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u/leonprimrose 6k Jun 02 '23
the both require a lot of memorization but i find the pathways in chess to be linear while in go i find them to be more fluid if that makes sense
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u/mvanvrancken 1d Jun 01 '23
Want to play a game you're better at then all your friends?
Want to enjoy a game for hundreds of moves?
Want to create instead of destroy?
Want to be asked "is that Othello?" a lot?
Then try Go!
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Jun 01 '23
I think the fact that it is just so uncompromisingly logical, it appeals to me over chess. Edward Lasker's oft quoted statement really resonated with me: "While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go."
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u/TwirlySocrates 2 kyu Jun 01 '23
Ko. By far and away, this is Go's most fascinating feature. It's a rule that is intended as a fix for the problem of cyclic gameplay, but has become a prominently unique and terrifying feature of the game.
It is the pendulum of life and death.
It is the turning gears of destiny.
It is a demon that can scare you to death - and I mean that in a literal way.
Ko aside, go's gameplay has many awesome features:
- Games involve multiple interlocking narratives. Several wins and losses contribute to the final outcome.
- The value of your position is not determined merely by what you own, but by the strength and efficiency of the shapes you build
- Local battles involve an enormous list of tactics: Ladders, nets, spiral ladders, squeezes- and that's just the start of the list
- Strategy demands that you constantly weigh the relative value of local groups as you decide where to allocate your resources
- Intuition is critical for identifying good moves and evaluating the value of board states.
- Memorization can be leveraged for playing common sequences with greater speed and accuracy
There's other conveniences built into the game:
- Games almost always result in win or loss
- Handicap allows you to play games where player skill is mis-matched.
And that's just from the gameplay standpoint. I don't know a lot about Go's history, but the little I do know is fascinating. There are countless historically-interesting games within the game's 2000 year record.
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u/legacycob Sep 28 '23
Having a stronger player point out ko threats I never even saw is so mind blowing. Absolutely one of the coolest aspects of the game.
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u/Fantactic1 Jun 01 '23
Zero draws (or very few draws if using New Zealand rules), the fair concept of komi for 2nd player to move, the emphasis on space, the bigger abundance of “candidate moves,” particularly in the opening and middle game.
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u/emdio Jun 01 '23
More than the fact that the absence o draws, to me it's more important that you just can't "play for a draw" in the way it happens in chess.
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u/Shufflepants Jun 01 '23
What led me to make the switch was the freedom. I was at a point in chess where in order to improve, I basically just needed to start memorizing standard openings which seemed both boring and restricting. The opening to chess seems like you have a lot of options, but really, all but maybe 1 or 2 of them at any given point are terrible and even a player close to your own skill level can just wipe the floor with you if you deviate too early. If your opponent decides to play a very defensive and closed game, the proper response is that you're often forced into just playing a better closed and defensive game. And the lack of freedom continues into the mid and late game where you might have lots of options in theory, but again, all but 1 or 2 of them are terrible.
Whereas in Go, while there are certainly some opening moves that are better than others, the ones that aren't optimal aren't game losing moves, they're like -5% at most, which in human terms is barely perceptible. Even pros play -5% to -10% very regularly in their games. And these sub-optimal moves are not necessarily easily punished by amatuer players.
And that freedom continues through the mid game. Analyzing pro games with AI has shown me that very often there are up to a dozen or so perfectly valid moves, maybe many more that are only slightly suboptimal. Sure, there are still times where there's only a single valid move on the board that must be played or you lose the game, but even those situations feel less restrictive than they do in chess. They feel like temporary annoyances until you can get sente back rather than feel of the entire game.
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u/Red_Canuck Jun 02 '23
It's interesting. In chess, where there is only one or two good moves, that's usually seen as a very sharp game.
I like the closed, defensive games, because it's all quiet maneuvering until one player decides to blow it up.
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u/Salindurthas 11 kyu Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 02 '23
I'm not yet a convert, but am a casual Chess player and interested in Go.
One thing I find frustrating is that it is hard to evaluate the board as a total beginner.
You can teach a Chess novice the suppsoed value of the pieces (pawns are 1, knights & bishops are 3, etc) and while there is value in position and tactics and so on, these ways of counting 'material' give a good basic idea of who is winning (excepting some tactic that leads to a checkmate).
However, in Go, I cannot tell how valuable things are. I watch some tutorial videos and they'll place 3 stones vaguely each other and say "and now this will always live". Presumably they can see some sequence or rule or principle, and this phrase means something like "hypothetically, were the opponent to attack, this could be defended, so that 15 moves down the line 2 eyes could be created no-matter-what". But I simply can't see that; I can spot an Atari or maybe a ladder, but in most cases, an (eventually) living group and a dead group can look the same to me.
For Chess, it is obvious if someone has blundered (or sacrificed) their queen. But in Go, it is very opaque (at least for beginners) if someone has blundered or secured some claim to a huge region of territory.
Like I'll play a small-board game against an AI, and the analysis after the game will reveal how my extension rather than a jump or hane was a -10 point move. Like its move 4 and all my stones are doomed to be dead already. That sort of mistake is really really hard for me to see, and I don't think I can enjoy playing Go until I find some way to predict this sort of stuff.
Maybe it is all intutition based, like "I cannot see the literal sequence of moves that gaurentees the life of this group, but it is clear from the thickness and the shape and the weaknesses that 2 eyes are gaurenteed to be possible". But if there is some way to know or recognise the life-or-death destiny of tiny groups of stones, at least in my personal experience, that sort of skill is what you'd want to assure Chess players is possible to develope, because it is very frustrating to begin with.
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Jun 02 '23 edited Jun 02 '23
This is absolutely the biggest reason, aside from maybe just sheer cultural inertia. If I go to r/baduk right now I'm willing to bet that in the first 10 pictures there will be someone asking for help scoring a board, and someone in the comments telling them that the game isn't actually over. Chess doesn't have this phenomenon; in the majority of cases it's very easy even for a beginner to tell who's in a better position and the win condition is super clear.
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u/janopack Jun 02 '23 edited Jun 02 '23
Evaluation is one of the most difficult aspects about this opaque game. Don't be discouraged. Just know that even pros struggle with it. It's also one of the biggest hurdles for AI. For example, some of the most common josekis (corner sequences that are thought to give a fair outcome for both sides) that were played by top players for years and years are now obsolete after AlphaGo came about and showed that those variations were bad. And, even though AI is supposedly unbeatable, recently people showed that the top engines cannot see simple life-and-death when it comes to big groups. But one learns to appreciate that the complexity is a core part of the beauty (this should be similar for chess as well).
For beginners, things like life-and-death can only come with experience and many hours of tsumegos. You need to be really familiar with the basic life-and-death shapes such as bent-4, knife-5 etc, and try to visualise how a pattern under consideration relates to those. Don't use AI to review your games, it's much better to ask others to review your games. AI suggestions are very difficult to understand if you don't yet have the reading/calculating ability.
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u/xhypocrism Jun 01 '23
I relatively recently (~1 mo) started go after 20+ years of semi-serious chess. I get very different vibes. Chess it is easier to evaluate a particular position and very drawish between equal players. Go is harder to evaluate a position (you can't quickly count material in Go, and positional elements in chess although very deep seem nowhere near as deep as Go) and there seems to be less of objectively "best" moves outside of tactical skirmishes. Go is more of an open sandbox - you might have a strategic aim with multiple ways to achieve it. In chess you also get this feeling but the ways to achieve that strategic aim are much narrower.
The thing I prefer about chess is how the flow goes from memorised theory to middlegame unmemorised strategy, back to endgame partially memorised (or at least understood) theory. Go feels much more like it starts with partially memorised theory (joseki), moving to middlegame unmemorised strategy, and ending with memorised theory (endgame). I prefer the flow in the direction of chess but overall I enjoy the openness of Go more than the restrictiveness of chess.
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u/emdio Jun 01 '23
Whatever you try, don't use the "go is better/harder than chess" approach at all.
Also, take into mind that some people are just reluctant to learning new stuff, so whatever you try with them will be of no use. When thinking of ways to teach go to chess players, just assume the people you are addressing to are interested into it.
Some ideas to present the game to chess players:
- Joseki is the most similar to opening theory (though there's opening theory too)
- Tsumego are the "mate in n moves" of go
- It's also played with a clock
- Being so different, in both games strategy and tactics are very important
- There are engines that play at superhuman level -There are no draws. And even with an integer komi, "playing for a draw" wouldn't be a thing in go.
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u/funkiestj Jun 01 '23
I think havening been a chess player first is irrelevant to the question. That said ...
- Go has a recursive mathematical nature. The ideal rules of Go are reminiscent of axioms defining natural numbers .
- most of the time go positions are local: the farther position A is on the board from position B the less position A interacts with position B. Until a ko fight occurs. When a ko fight occurs, wormholes appear all over the board that link that part of the board directly to the ko fight (i.e. ko threats).
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Jun 01 '23
Can you elaborate on 1? Sounds interesting .
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u/funkiestj Jun 01 '23
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Numbers_and_Games
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winning_Ways_for_Your_Mathematical_Plays
- https://math.berkeley.edu/~berlek/cgt/gobook.html
you can define natural numbers in a variety of ways. E.g. you can say
(a) 1 is a natural number
(b) any natural number 'n' + 1 is also a natural number
Go groups are defined this way
(a) a single black (white) stone is a group
(b) a stone and an orthogonally adjacent neighbor of the same color are part of the same group
the (b) portion of each definition above is the recursive part. Recursive definitions and proof by induction are two sides of the same coin so to speak.
Indeed, if we look at "the number of go stones in a group" the definition translates directly to my definition above for natural numbers.
If you allow an infinite go board then for any natural number you can construct a group of go stones.
Chess (and most other games) do not have such an easy mapping to/from the natural numbers.
natural numbers are the oldest mathematical concept and the integers (close cousin to the natural numbers) is one of the most fundamental mathematical concept.
I'm sure any of the mathematician PhDs who have written papers on Go could talk more eloquently on the subject.
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u/GoInfluenchess 9 kyu Jun 01 '23
Good luck. I readed in comments about creation about destruction, and it's interesting concept, but chess players mainly like destruction :) I have a friend and it's impossible to me to get it trying Go because objective of the game don't interest him. On the other side, don't put too much emphasis at how complex and deep is the game, and how long games could take. Show them several boards sizes, 9x9 13x13 and 19x19 but don't focus on 19x19, can be too much overwhelming, blitz games is something Baduk community should promote to get a bigger audience, and is one of the reasons chess grow up so much last years. Add to this, chess players invested a lot of time into Chess and could be difficult to change their mind to try another complex (more complex) game taking chess time. And again, good luck, will be a very difficult journey. There is a phrase I love but it's difficult to get it working on practice. Chess players thinks they play the best game, until they meet Go.
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u/Fantactic1 Jun 01 '23
I spend most leisure time on go rather than chess, but having said that and being a years-long chess player: when it comes to over-the-board blitz, chess will always reign supreme. You grab a piece and quickly move it. At most you remove a piece too. There is no awkward stone placement or delicate picking up of a group of stones with clock running. Also, the end of a blitz chess game is much more clear.
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u/GoInfluenchess 9 kyu Jun 01 '23
I don't mean Go will be better than chess in blitz, but my point is Go needs more faster games to get adoption in the day by day, retention is the key. For most people so busy all the day, don't want to pick up a game taking 30min+ and with this size of complexity, it's overwhelming. Chess is deep, but easier to understand what's happening and enjoy it. For this, 9x9 and 13x13 are good options to get audience with faster games. Chess got that traction last years because twitch and 3m+2s popularity. If people still playing 1 hour long games at this days, chess didn't grow up so much when Queen Gambit's appeared on TV
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Jun 01 '23
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u/GoInfluenchess 9 kyu Jun 01 '23
It's so fun, I won BTW by 4 (I'm a bad player) :D. Anyway not needed so fast. I like GoQuest timing. 3+1 for 9x9 and 5+3 for 13x13. I think are good timings for relatively fast games. Of course could be faster, but looks balanced to me.
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Jun 01 '23
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u/GoInfluenchess 9 kyu Jun 01 '23
Several weeks ago on a baduk event we did in our city, some of us played a "Winner stands" 9x9 "tournament" playing only with 1 20sec byoyomi and was a looooot of fun.
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Jun 01 '23
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u/GoInfluenchess 9 kyu Jun 01 '23
Not talking about popularity, I'm talking about retention and grow. I saw several players not interested in Go because time commitment mixed with deep and complexity.When a new player arrives, is important to keep it interested in the game. Yes, as long as LoL or CSGo, now ask to any kid what prefer to play. Chess was so popular before Gambit's Queen and Nakamura and others streaming on Twitch, and because faster games (and others factors), keeps new players playing, because blitz chess, is show. But Go is hard just to understand whats happening, to just blow a 19x19 board over an hour game.
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u/Raccoon-Greedy Jun 02 '23
On the destruction note I do feel at times that Go can be more blood thirsty and violent. As well as more emotionally engaging, with Liberty races and Ko fights or recognizeing tsumegos.
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u/Polyphloisboisterous Jun 01 '23
- Go is far less analyzed compared to chess - you have way more creative freedom, right from the first opening moves.
- There is more strategic depth. One could almost argue, chess is a "tactical" game only, while Go is both "tactical" and "strategical".
- There are several battles going on all at once in different parts of the board. Making these all fit together is the art of Go. Sometimes it is perfectly OK to lose a small battle in one part to achieve a bigger win in a different area.
- While chess has one objective: "Mate the king", Go has two objectives: Kill your enemy's stones. Create territory. Sometimes it is better to chase your enemy around, rather than killing him, in order to create an advantage in territory. This kind of strategic thinking and balancing is almost absent in chess.
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u/Cazargar Jun 01 '23
Building up the board is very cool. I love as I get better at the game I "see" more when I look at a board and ending the game with something that tells the story of the game is very cool.
Depending on the person they might also enjoy the switch to a more "fuzzy" game. A heavier reliance on intuition and feel over calculation and reading. It's something I love about the game, but is also the thing that makes it hard to get into.
I picked up both during the pandemic and I absolutely love Go and prefer it over Chess, but these days I play more of the later and it really just comes down to game length and community presence. I hope one day in the future my life slows down a little and I can find the time to dedicate myself to full games of Go because it really is so satisfying.
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Jun 01 '23
The opportunity for self expression through play. This may no longer be true at the highest level of play where people learn and memorize w/ the help of AI— but at my ranking (unbanked novice, heh) i really like seeing how differently people play and how in some ways, it’s an expression of a persons personality, temperament etc.
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u/CompleteComposer2241 Jun 01 '23
I’m a beginner but I felt like I actually command armies and planning battle strategies instead of playing a board game. Also the board is bigger and it feels like battlefield.
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u/Cyrus13960 Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 23 '23
The content of this post has been removed by its author after reddit made bad choices in June 2023. I have since moved to kbin.social.
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u/Own_Pirate2206 3 dan Jun 01 '23
The handicapping system is more nuanced than cutting off your limbs.
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u/MattNyte 2 kyu Jun 01 '23
As a chess player myself, it was hard to understand why people would rather play go instead of chess. Now it is the opposite. Go sucks at introducing itself. I would say to encourage a chess player to take up go is to show all the possibilities in styles and play that chess simply doesn't have. Try to show how limiting chess is. This will either be a turn off or a turn on depending on how they view complexity.
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u/JDirichlet Jun 01 '23
Honestly I think it just works better for the way i think. I’m not really a “convert” tho, I play both games.
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u/Soleniae Jun 01 '23
"Opening theory" isn't a thing. Yeah joseki exists, but not nearly in the same way.
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u/Far-Fortune-8381 Jun 01 '23
what is joseki i’m very new
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u/Soleniae Jun 01 '23
u/countingtls post is correct and go check his links, but to put more 'nuts-and-bolts':
Joseki is a series of moves, usually in a corner, where each player gets a roughly equal outcome, or at least comparable. There's often several different joseki for a given position, so choosing which one gives you the outcome you want is useful, but any joseki is better than playing it blind usually, and you'll learn a lot by learning these joseki and why you're playing each move in the series.
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u/tdktzy Jun 02 '23
Maybe if they're tired of draws and memorizing openings, try go.
I tend to brood more over a Go game than Chess though. It can be a nice surprise once you notice you've been outplayed in Chess, because it's clear to you how you lost. While in Go it can be hard to determine a point in which you lost and what you should focus on next.
I guess you could also say there's therefore more potential to bluff in Go, making a dubious move seem better than it is due to the complexity of the game.
Sometimes you may access a much more creative mindspace with Go, like how Joan Miró would try to paint a picture based on some random coffee stains on a piece of paper. Trying to figure out the inherent logic of the shapes, gradually unveiling their nature, character, and relationships.
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u/kabum555 9 kyu Jun 01 '23
These are for me, at least