For some reason I want to learn how to play Go. It’s a classic board game, that has history and depth to rival Chess, and an elegant simplicity to rival checkers. So, I want to learn how to play it. Here comes another insight into how my brain works though…

I’m fairly intelligent, was always good in school, quick to pick up new information etc. I don’t really care for chess though. I suspect I’m going to run into the same problem with Go, though at least Go has a handicap system. My problem is that Chess (and Go) have been studied to death. There are lots of books on the subject of Chess, standard openings, strategies that can be memorized and employed. The challenge then becomes “who can read the better book” or “who can recognize the patterns best,” rather than “who can react to this situation the best.” I want to feel like I’m playing a game that’s never been played before. With chess, despite the huge numbers of different board situations that can result, I always feel like I’m trapped in someone else’s game that they’ve played before. The level of unpredictability is pretty low, and someone trying something “new” and “unpredictable” finds that a good opponent will have anticipated their “new” strategy because their old “tried and true” strategies tell them what to do. If I want a game of pattern recognition, I’ll play Classic Concentration. Now I realize that at higher levels of Chess, the idea of playing by rote falls by the wayside somewhat, as everyone is so good that they’ve seen it all before, so the very best are both good at recognizing patterns, and coming up with new patterns that people hopefully haven’t seen before. To get to that point though, you’ve gotta pay your dues, and learn the standard openings, the standard strategies, and avoid the standard pitfalls. No chess grand-master is going to be surprised by a 7 move checkmate.

That doesn’t interest me, and that’s why I never took up chess in any serious way. I mean, yeah, I know how the pieces move, and I know some standard ways to get an easy checkmate against an unwary opponent, but that’s no fun, all it shows me is that they’ve never seen that particular set of moves before. I’m hoping that Go is different, precisely because it’s a more methodical, back and forth type of game, and while a single move might lose you the game, you (I) won’t know it until the final tally.

So, that’s why when you challenge me to a game of chess, I’ll usually decline. Though I have had some good games of chess with some people in the past, anyone who takes the game remotely seriously would probably cringe to see how we played them.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Oww! My lute!” - Martin