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发帖数: 19398 | 1 http://www.mattbengtson.com/interests-go-forchessplayers.html
Interests
I took up go rather late in life (I was nearing 30) and since discovering it
, I more or less dropped chess for a time to probe the deep mysteries of go.
If you are a chessplayer who is feeling stuck or wants to try something new
and rich, I would recommend it very highly. Chess is certainly a great game
, but I have presented here some problems I felt in chess that are no issue
in go:
White advantage
In chess games, one player always has the advantage right from the getgo.
This can be especially troublesome with unequally matched players, where for
instance a stronger Black player might have to play inferior moves to fight
for a win, and run afoul of the truth of the position. Tournament pairings
that randomize colors definitely introduce an element of luck into the
results. A go game is won by the player with more points, and while the
first player starts with the initiative, the second player is traditionally
awarded a compensation, called “komi,” in the 5 to 8 point range, so that
neither player is clearly more likely to win the game than the other. Komi
doesn’t yield exactly a 50% winning probability but close enough so that Go
players rarely have a strong preference for color.
Draws
High level chess is full of “GM draws” without serious fighting; it is a
common and constant complaint that well-played chess games with accurate
play just lead to equal positions. In modern go there are no draws, because
komi includes a half-point to make this impossible. There is the remote
possibility of a kind of “threefold repetition of position,” a triple ko,
but this is not even a one in a million chance. In high level games, a
player who feels even slightly behind will take chances to create more
complications, and it can take great skill to refute such risky play. This
naturally leads to exciting battles.
Too many Openings
In chess there is a massive amount of opening theory; keeping up in detail
with the developments in your favorite special opening can be a huge
practical advantage. In go, while there are some standard corner sequences,
some of them exceedingly complex, the local choice of pattern relates to the
whole board strategy. Thus, one can”t specialize in just a few to the
exclusion of all others without incurring a global disadvantage. In general,
when playing go it is fairly easy to avoid a pet variation or prepared
analysis without making concessions.
Too powerful computers
I found it disheartening that the truth of most chess positions can be found
by giving the position to a competent analysis engine and letting it run
for a few minutes. The excitement of the search for the truth of the
position, of using one’s own analytical power, is now basically lost. Go is
rarely analyzable like this because of the sheer size of the search space.
Computers are indeed getting somewhat stronger, especially in local combat,
and they may someday outperform humans in this field as well, but the
challenges of artificial intelligence are very significant, and the mystery
of the game, part of its appeal, should remain intact for the foreseeable
future.
Not enough scale and variety
I found after years of tournament play and study that many chess games fall
into certain standard types of positions; I found as I wandered around a
tournament hall that many games that I observed looked pretty similar to
games I had seen before. I can’t think of one full-board go game I’ve
played whose course resembled any other, because go is as if in a higher
dimension, like many smaller chess games going on at once, and the way they
relate to one other adds a significant layer of extra complexity and
apparent unpredictability.
Boring passive opponents
Contrary to what one often reads, a reasonably strong chess player with no
ambitions and avoids creating weaknesses is very difficult if not impossible
to beat, particularly with the Black pieces. This can be frustrating in a
must-win situation in a tournament. In go, this isn’t an issue at all; the
person who yields to every challenge will make one concession after another,
and can only hope to win a high handicap game. It’s the players who fight
with you at every turn who give trouble, but this is a much more exciting
and inspiring scenario to confront.
Poor pairing systems
The way the USCF runs open Swiss system tournaments may be OK in some
respects for determining a winner but it’s no way to produce interesting or
valuable games of chess. I played in many chess tournaments next to people
my own strength; I saw them all the time but was rarely ever paired against
them. I was paired frequently against the same weaker opponents. Go
tournaments use a “Swiss-McMahon” system that begins every tournament with
you playing an equally matched opponent. You move up or down from there
based on your results.
Unequal opponents
In chess it isn’t much fun playing against a much weaker opponent, feeling
that anything other than a win would be a disaster, while the win will prove
nothing and teach you little about the game. It’s also not much fun
playing a much stronger opponent getting beat up badly, as in a mismatched
boxing match. In go, there’s an effective handicap system that makes these
kinds of mismatches fun and interesting, giving both sides reasonable
chances to win. Chess has a history of odds games too, and they are probably
underestimated these days, but the game itself seems not to lend itself
comfortably to unequal matches. In go, handicap games are commonplace and
fun, and low handicap games are quite fair and also widespread in many
tournaments.
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