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<blasphemy alert> Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat b

<blasphemy alert> Does anyone know some good alternatives to chess, as a game that mixes deep thought and aesthetic variety? I tried Go, but found it somewhat boring compared to chess, because of its uniformity (which, on the other hand, has the advantage of beautiful simplicity and symmetry.) On another note: it is unfortunate, in my opinion, that chess has a special standing among board games. I would love to see some more variety in world-class intellectual matches, similar to what exists in physical sports. Something like a "board game Olympics". Edit: Thank you for all the useful replies! In reply to some of you, I am a complete beginner at Go. Maybe the word 'boring' was not carefully chosen. As a programmer, I should have known better - that things may seem boring (tiresome?) until you become more fluent with them. I should certainly give Go another shot...

bmslieght 13y ago
Have another go at Go. The handicap system is wonderful. It make two players of what ever standard have an equal match. There is a reason why Go is old and globally the uptake is far bigger than Chess - it combines very type of thinking. Strategic versus immediate tactical. Thinking globally versus locally. Chess appears too 1 dimensional now by comparison.
cjbprime 13y ago
There's already something very similar to a "board game Olympics", it's called the Mind Sports Olympiad: http://www.boardability.com/games.php http://www.boardability.com/games.php I'd give Go another try. If you're interested in watching anime, I found the series _Hikaru no Go_ pretty good motivation to keep learning.
- jere 13y ago
  Agreed. I'm not even a big anime fan and Hikaru no Go really kept up my motivation when I was first starting. It's hard to believe how exciting they made Go look, when it's actually just two people quietly placing stones on a board for hours. Here's a trailer if you don't believe me: http://youtu.be/XpV4ZWh4NkQ http://youtu.be/XpV4ZWh4NkQ
  - Joona 13y ago
    I agree, Hikaru no Go is amazing. I have not seen the anime, but instead read the manga (which is actually longer).
sganesh 13y ago
Have you heard about Arimaa? http://arimaa.com/arimaa/ http://arimaa.com/arimaa/
- kybernetikos 13y ago
  Arimaa is a good choice - it can be played on a chess board, has quite a bit of variety, and is deep as well.
  - jamii 13y ago
    It's also interesting for HN because there is a $11k prize for the first AI to win the annual mixed human-AI tournament.
TylerE 13y ago
Not a board game, but Bridge. Backgammon is also very rich also, although there is a random element there which, depending on your preferences, is either a good or bad thing.
- laureny 13y ago
  The random element in backgammon is inconsequential: a good player will always beat inferior players over several games. What makes good players good is not that they know how to win when they have a good roll but the fact that with regular throws, each of their move is optimal, which guarantees a win over the duration of the entire game. The same could be said of poker, where the element of chance appears to be huge but which doesn't matter over many games.
  - TylerE 13y ago
    Yes, absolutely - but it's a notable difference from the fixed game-tree state/totally known information of games like Chess and Go.
  - petegrif 13y ago
    And don't forget the significance of the doubling die!
- cynicalkane 13y ago
  +1 for Bridge. Bridge is a game of short-term and long-term memory, strategy (in long matches), tactics, deduction, induction, risk assessment, hidden information, and finally a strong test of character, and your judgment of the characters of others. Unlike chess it does not seem to have a "limit" where you stop getting smarter and start merely learning more about chess. There's a reason it's the favorite game of some of the world's smartest and richest men.
  - TylerE 13y ago
    Do you play on BBO? Always looking for good partners, especially those interested in playing weird stuff, which I have a feeling you might...
sergj 13y ago
Boring compared to chess? As a Go player I take this as an insult. Go is way more interesting, there are more fights, more complexity and you make a lot of tactical and strategic decisions in one game. Also you have a great handicap system, playing stronger players is no big problem. Did I mention that there are no remis and pro matches are often decided by 0,5 points which is really little. I am ending my rant with a quote: "Rather than being the image of a single struggle as in chess, Go is much more like the panorama of an entire campaign, or complex theatre of war. And so it is more like modern warfare where strategic mass movements are the ultimate determinants of victory. … As in modern warfare, direct combat, without supporting tactics, rarely occurs. In fact, to engage too soon in direct combat frequently spells defeat." -- Oscar Korschelt
- jballanc 13y ago
  I agree, but just wanted to add that if you find Go boring, I suggest you pick up a good Go book or two. The really good Go writers can construct an entire war narrative from a game of Go, all the while giving you deeper insight into the strategy and tactics at play in the game. To be honest, compared to Go writing, I find much writing about Chess to be very boring and analytical (though I'm sure that has as much to do with specific authors as with the subject matter in question).
  - Yovel 13y ago
    Do you have any good Go book suggestions?
    - RBerenguel 13y ago
      You can lurk the go subreddit /r/baduk (baduk is the Korean name for go, helpful for web searches now Google killed the term) and Sensei's Library: http://senseis.xmp.net/ http://senseis.xmp.net/ a wiki for and from go players.
    - ars_technician 13y ago
      http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html
heyitsnick 13y ago
Poker
thenmar 13y ago
What board games have you played? In the last 10-15 years, the U.S. has experienced something of a German-style board game renaissance. Check out Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Agricola, and many other less popular ones. Kind of irrelevant, but board games seem like a great application of 3D printing. I wonder if there will be another surge in popularity when (if?) 3D printers become household items.
msluyter 13y ago
I'm not sure exactly what constitutes a viable "chess alternative," but if you're open to going beyond two player and investigating other styles of games, check out the top games on BGG (boardgamegeek.com). Many of these have a great deal of strategic depth and subtlety: http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame
pjungwir 13y ago
If you're looking for something close to chess, you might enjoy Xiangqi, or Chinese Chess. It has a similar layout, but with a few changes, e.g. rook-like pieces that capture not the closest piece, but the second-closest piece. Two on the same file creates all sort of weird possibilities.
username42 13y ago
Go is not boring, but what you see in the game evolves a lot with your level. I have stayed a couple of year at 5 kyu with monotonous games. Once I have improved to 3kyu, games were a lot more funny.
abvdasker 13y ago
David Foster Wallace wrote (I'm paraphrasing here) that "tennis is a combination of chess and boxing". Maybe try that.
- phaus 13y ago
  Sounds like he thinks very highly of tennis. Most people like to think that the things they like are better than the things everyone else likes. The truth is, any skill-based game can be extremely intense at the highest levels of play.
- scott_s 13y ago
  Chess boxing is a thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing Anyway, every one-on-one sport makes a reference to "human chess."
- brd 13y ago
  If we're going to start suggesting physical activities I'd say Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and rock climbing are both very chess like in their emphasis on strategic placement/puzzle solving. Your limb placement, your endurance, the way you shift your weight, the current momentum, they're all your pieces and you have to play them appropriately. I'm a huge fan of both activities because of the combination of mental and physical demands.
S4M 13y ago
You can try Chinese chess (xiang qi) or Japanese chess (shogi). I particularly like shogi because it has the rule that you can reuse the pieces of your opponent you capture. Both are a bit hard to learn though because the pieces are oriental characters.
- se523 13y ago
  Shogi is derived from xiangqi (same with Korean chess or janggi). And note that the characters are called hanzi or kanji (literally Chinese/Han characters), not oriental characters. It may be hard because the pieces don't have distinct shapes, but it's not after you learn/recognize the characters.
scott_s 13y ago
Chess 2 ( http://ludemegames.com/chess2/ http://ludemegames.com/chess2/). I'm not joking. USGamer has a good write-up on it: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid.
- KVFinn 13y ago
  >Chess 2 ( http://ludemegames.com/chess2/ http://ludemegames.com/chess2/). I'm not joking. USGamer has a good write-up on it: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel >I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid. The creator's blog post is quite entertaining, thought it was a joke but the game is quite real and looks interesting: >Chess 1 was a big hit, no question there, but a few issues have cropped up over the years. First, the original game ends in a draw uncomfortably often. Second, memorization (rather than on-the-spot intuition) ended up being much more important than the original developers intended. Even top players such as Fischer and Capablanca complained about this. Third, because it has no hidden information, the ability to capitalize on reading your opponent is more limited than it could be. And finally, the first version offered only a single army and one matchup. http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html >So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw. >ntuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd hope. http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
  - lunaru 13y ago
    Since you bring up Sirlin, I would recommend Yomi, which is a card game that is very balanced and very competitive. I don't think it's as deep as chess, but I certainly enjoy playing it.
jedberg 13y ago
Have you tried Chess960[0] 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960
jmgregory 13y ago
Off the top of my head, if you're looking for deep two-player strategy with zero chance element, besides Go there's Othello (Reversi), Hive, Checkers, and Khet. If you're willing to put up with some chance, Backgammon and Battle Line can be very satisfying. For more than two players, take a look at Puerto Rico (finite but negligible chance) and Diplomacy.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Diplomacy is a very good group game that even works by (e)mail. Colonial Diplomacy was also pretty good, but it felt like a sprint compared to Diplomacy.
- schoen 13y ago
  Quoridor is a great abstract strategy game that doesn't seem to have beecome very widely known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoridor A lot of the subtlety comes in because of the rule that you can never completely obstruct the opponent's path to the goal, but you can try to make it as convoluted as possible. Hence people try to multiply the opponent's options (so that they can be closed off at the last minute) and limit their own options (so that the opponent isn't allowed to block their unique path to the goal).
  - RBerenguel 13y ago
    One of the most underrated games I have seen. I rank it as Hex for me: two awesome games, very little known (at least there's a very good Hex strategy book)
Cthulhu_ 13y ago
Magic: the Gathering? It's a game of infinite possibilities and strategies and has a big meta game around it, too. Plus collectibles. Plus cool artwork. Plus good apps.
- simon_renoult 13y ago
  Plus - sadly - expensive.
- GFischer 13y ago
  (not the op) I love Magic: the Gathering and played on and off for 18 years now. It has two big downsides, the main one for me is that it's extremely expensive (a brand new console + collection of titles is equivalent in price to owning a couple of top tier decks). The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore. That said, yeah, building decks playing the metagame is very rewarding intellectually :) and having games 24/7 on Magic Online is great.
  - RBerenguel 13y ago
    /The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore./ Not like Go, don't you think? (I do, been playing go for 10 years already)
- phaus 13y ago
  In some ways, the internet ruined games like MTG. I still like to play, but the widespread availability of tournament decklists stifles creativity. There are still formats where you see a wide variety of decks, but T2 play normally involves picking one of maybe 5 or 6 viable options.
  - emidln 13y ago
    The netdeck argument is probably for a different site, but I strongly believe that MTG as a tournament format benefits enormously from widely available top-performing decklists, video and text coverage, and articles on deck strategy as well game tactics with particular decks or deck archetypes.
jmilloy 13y ago
I think Hive is the best chess "alternative". It feels lighter, but plays deeply and is never boring. It has an interesting geometric component. And there are annual championships. (Get the Hive Carbon edition, it's much nicer looking) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_(game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_(game)
- 2mur 13y ago
  Yeah Hive is a great game and I love the bakelite pieces.
jimmahoney 13y ago
Pente.
damonk 13y ago
What about Chess960?
jrs99 13y ago
If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something. Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess, but much less tactical and a lot more strategical games. In other words, computers can't beat the best players in these games yet. For whatever reasons, the status of games is somewhat related to whether they are "solved" by programs. Chess, like backgammon and checkers, is really on its way down. I love chess, and play it all the time, and same with many other games. But the allure goes down once it is solved. maybe all games will be figured out by software... but at the moment, no limit and go seem extremely exciting in terms of their possibilities/strategies.
- schoen 13y ago
  Although the best chess players are now computers, chess doesn't seem anywhere close to being solved in the formal game theory sense (where we know how to produce perfect play that can't be beaten even in principle). There was a gap of over a decade between a machine becoming the world checkers champion (1994) and checkers becoming a formally solved game (2007). (Impressively, both of these were achieved by the same person, Johnathan Schaeffer.) The difference, of course, is between "this machine can beat the best existing human player" and "this machine can beat any conceivable player as long as it's logically possible to do so". And right now we're at the former stage for chess (at least in some abstract sense: I'm not sure that a specific machine exists in operable condition that reflects the state of the art), but nowhere near the latter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess#Predictions_on_when.2Fif_chess_will_be_solved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess#Predictions_on_w...
  - jrs99 13y ago
    yes, absolutely agree. that's what i mean by "solved" in quotes. i mean that computers can beat the best humans, not that the games are solved in the absolute sense like tic tac toe.
- phaus 13y ago
  >If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something. I love chess, but this type of thinking is flawed. Using this logic, the Twilight movies are misunderstood masterpieces, Justin Beiber is the millennials' Mozart, and WWE style wrestling should be in the Olympics alongside the decathlon.
bionerd 13y ago
If you’re looking specifically for an alternative to Go or chess then be sure to have a look at a list of the so-called abstract board games (Go and chess belong to this category too) on the BoardGameGeek: http://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame http://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame (sorted by popularity by default) There are a few gems there that you might be interested in.
flud43 13y ago
You should really give No Limit Hold'em or Pot Limit Omaha a try. Poker is a game of astounding complexity once you start taking it seriously and it's quite fun. Combine that with the ability to take a small bankroll, $100 or whatever you're comfortable using as seed money, and turn it into a roll sufficient for high stakes poker (with enough dedication and time) and it truly does become quite an amazing game to play. I personally play heads-up poker. Unlike 9-handed poker, heads-up poker is constant action. It's more dependent on opponent profiling and maximizing expectation on the fly, using experience and statistics. A game of infinite variety. Since April I've taken $200 and, playing online and live poker, have profited in the following ways: +$6458 - online poker heads up matches +$2900 - rakeback/bonuses from pokerstars +$12500 - live tournaments and pot limit omaha cash And that's merely playing recreationally, completely separate from my full time job. You can play a complex, fun game and make money doing it. Who wouldn't enjoy that?
- RRiccio 13y ago
  I used to be a professional poker player, and although I agree that especially in the beginning -- while you're quickly evolving -- it's a lot of fun, after a while you do it for the money. It's very different from MTG, where me and my friends would play for the thrill of it, spending whatever little money we had to play. The easy test here is: would you play a poker tournament just for fun, if there was nothing at stake? Few people actually do it. The thrill in both cases actually is (or becomes) the money made/lost.
  - flud43 13y ago
    If you aren't enjoying it anymore, you probably shouldn't be playing any longer. I didn't advocate playing only for the sake of making money. I suggested it because of how complex a game it is. How much time it takes to master. And because the potential rewards once you do are quite significant, which is a nice added bonus. And I'm not sure when you stopped playing (pre black friday?) but I don't think there's a single point at which I've ever stopped improving. I know many heads-up professionals as well and not a single one of them ever stops learning and improving their game. Stagnation in poker is death. As such, I don't know why you feel like it was a lot of fun at the start but lost that later on. There is always another level deeper you can go. The point of any game is to win. The metric that determines the winner of a game is different in every case. In poker, it's how much money you're making. But that doesn't have anything to do with the game itself. It merely depicts how well you're playing. Learning to maximize expectation with true mathematical finesse while factoring in accurate opponent profiling and gameflow is one of the most challenging things I've ever had to do gamewise. I've played chess since I was 5, Counter-Strike very seriously for five years, WoW for the first 3 years before it went to shit, and have been getting into Go. And in none of those games have I achieved the level of mental satisfaction as I have from poker. Edit: Was your stars alias RRiccio as well? Were you a cash player? You only have ~750 tournaments recorded on sharkscope.
gosukiwi 13y ago
Pretty unrelated but you can try online strategy games, personally I've played League of Legends for about two years and I still can't reach Diamond tier. LoL does require some mechanical skill but once you get it down, it's 90% knowledge. Another alternative is Magic The Gathering :) or HearthStone.
- saraid216 13y ago
  The discussion around Carlsen has led me to instinctively make comparisons to Starcraft professional play. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/How_to_Improve http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/How_to_Improve If you listen to commentators discussing matches, they can explain why certain decisions are gutsy, what the history of each player is (so-and-so is amazing at Medivac drops, so you expect that going into a game with him; so-and-so prefers the late game, so you'll never see him build proxy pylons), and the long-term ramifications of certain events (it doesn't seem like a big deal to lose 5 workers, just like a pawn sacrifice doesn't seem huge, but at the pro level of play, you'd better get something of equal or greater worth out of that; it doesn't seem like a big deal to know when Zerg builds their first extractor, but scouting that timing can tell you a lot about build order). > LoL does require some mechanical skill but once you get it down, it's 90% knowledge. At a certain point, LoL is about having teammates who you've worked with enough to anticipate and account for. There's a world of difference between baiting the carry and hoping your jungler will respond to your ping, and baiting the carry because you know there's three seconds until your jungler's dash is off cooldown. Personally, I get the shakes when I PvP in LoL so what decent mechanical skill I have kinda fractures. :( I miss watching LoL streams, actually; they stopped working for me.
  - gosukiwi 13y ago
    The best thing to do is play like you don't care, so you dont tremble nor doubt to make plays. I've been playing LoL for more than two years, sitting in Platinum right now, still have a lot to learn, the most interesting thing is that LoL is still 90% strategy and knowledge.
petegrif 13y ago
Bridge
CatMtKing 13y ago
Since bridge was mentioned, how about majong? I could play either of them for hours on end.
- sukuriant 13y ago
  We should note for those that don't know, Cat is talking about real Mahjong, not the matching-game Mahjong that people know from 90's era computing.
girvo 13y ago
StarCraft. ;)
baq 13y ago
Arimaa can be played using a chess set: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/ http://arimaa.com/arimaa/. it's specifically designed to be hard for computers to play.

bmslieght 13y ago

Have another go at Go. The handicap system is wonderful. It make two players of what ever standard have an equal match. There is a reason why Go is old and globally the uptake is far bigger than Chess - it combines very type of thinking. Strategic versus immediate tactical. Thinking globally versus locally. Chess appears too 1 dimensional now by comparison.

cjbprime 13y ago

There's already something very similar to a "board game Olympics", it's called the Mind Sports Olympiad: http://www.boardability.com/games.php http://www.boardability.com/games.php I'd give Go another try. If you're interested in watching anime, I found the series _Hikaru no Go_ pretty good motivation to keep learning.

jere 13y ago
Agreed. I'm not even a big anime fan and Hikaru no Go really kept up my motivation when I was first starting. It's hard to believe how exciting they made Go look, when it's actually just two people quietly placing stones on a board for hours. Here's a trailer if you don't believe me: http://youtu.be/XpV4ZWh4NkQ http://youtu.be/XpV4ZWh4NkQ
- Joona 13y ago
  I agree, Hikaru no Go is amazing. I have not seen the anime, but instead read the manga (which is actually longer).

sganesh 13y ago

Have you heard about Arimaa? http://arimaa.com/arimaa/ http://arimaa.com/arimaa/

kybernetikos 13y ago
Arimaa is a good choice - it can be played on a chess board, has quite a bit of variety, and is deep as well.
- jamii 13y ago
  It's also interesting for HN because there is a $11k prize for the first AI to win the annual mixed human-AI tournament.

TylerE 13y ago

Not a board game, but Bridge. Backgammon is also very rich also, although there is a random element there which, depending on your preferences, is either a good or bad thing.

laureny 13y ago
The random element in backgammon is inconsequential: a good player will always beat inferior players over several games. What makes good players good is not that they know how to win when they have a good roll but the fact that with regular throws, each of their move is optimal, which guarantees a win over the duration of the entire game. The same could be said of poker, where the element of chance appears to be huge but which doesn't matter over many games.
- TylerE 13y ago
  Yes, absolutely - but it's a notable difference from the fixed game-tree state/totally known information of games like Chess and Go.
- petegrif 13y ago
  And don't forget the significance of the doubling die!
cynicalkane 13y ago
+1 for Bridge. Bridge is a game of short-term and long-term memory, strategy (in long matches), tactics, deduction, induction, risk assessment, hidden information, and finally a strong test of character, and your judgment of the characters of others. Unlike chess it does not seem to have a "limit" where you stop getting smarter and start merely learning more about chess. There's a reason it's the favorite game of some of the world's smartest and richest men.
- TylerE 13y ago
  Do you play on BBO? Always looking for good partners, especially those interested in playing weird stuff, which I have a feeling you might...

sergj 13y ago

Boring compared to chess? As a Go player I take this as an insult. Go is way more interesting, there are more fights, more complexity and you make a lot of tactical and strategic decisions in one game. Also you have a great handicap system, playing stronger players is no big problem. Did I mention that there are no remis and pro matches are often decided by 0,5 points which is really little. I am ending my rant with a quote: "Rather than being the image of a single struggle as in chess, Go is much more like the panorama of an entire campaign, or complex theatre of war. And so it is more like modern warfare where strategic mass movements are the ultimate determinants of victory. … As in modern warfare, direct combat, without supporting tactics, rarely occurs. In fact, to engage too soon in direct combat frequently spells defeat." -- Oscar Korschelt

jballanc 13y ago
I agree, but just wanted to add that if you find Go boring, I suggest you pick up a good Go book or two. The really good Go writers can construct an entire war narrative from a game of Go, all the while giving you deeper insight into the strategy and tactics at play in the game. To be honest, compared to Go writing, I find much writing about Chess to be very boring and analytical (though I'm sure that has as much to do with specific authors as with the subject matter in question).
- Yovel 13y ago
  Do you have any good Go book suggestions?
  - RBerenguel 13y ago
    You can lurk the go subreddit /r/baduk (baduk is the Korean name for go, helpful for web searches now Google killed the term) and Sensei's Library: http://senseis.xmp.net/ http://senseis.xmp.net/ a wiki for and from go players.
  - ars_technician 13y ago
    http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html

heyitsnick 13y ago

Poker

thenmar 13y ago

What board games have you played? In the last 10-15 years, the U.S. has experienced something of a German-style board game renaissance. Check out Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Agricola, and many other less popular ones. Kind of irrelevant, but board games seem like a great application of 3D printing. I wonder if there will be another surge in popularity when (if?) 3D printers become household items.

msluyter 13y ago

I'm not sure exactly what constitutes a viable "chess alternative," but if you're open to going beyond two player and investigating other styles of games, check out the top games on BGG (boardgamegeek.com). Many of these have a great deal of strategic depth and subtlety: http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame

pjungwir 13y ago

If you're looking for something close to chess, you might enjoy Xiangqi, or Chinese Chess. It has a similar layout, but with a few changes, e.g. rook-like pieces that capture not the closest piece, but the second-closest piece. Two on the same file creates all sort of weird possibilities.

username42 13y ago

Go is not boring, but what you see in the game evolves a lot with your level. I have stayed a couple of year at 5 kyu with monotonous games. Once I have improved to 3kyu, games were a lot more funny.

abvdasker 13y ago

David Foster Wallace wrote (I'm paraphrasing here) that "tennis is a combination of chess and boxing". Maybe try that.

phaus 13y ago
Sounds like he thinks very highly of tennis. Most people like to think that the things they like are better than the things everyone else likes. The truth is, any skill-based game can be extremely intense at the highest levels of play.
scott_s 13y ago
Chess boxing is a thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing Anyway, every one-on-one sport makes a reference to "human chess."
brd 13y ago
If we're going to start suggesting physical activities I'd say Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and rock climbing are both very chess like in their emphasis on strategic placement/puzzle solving. Your limb placement, your endurance, the way you shift your weight, the current momentum, they're all your pieces and you have to play them appropriately. I'm a huge fan of both activities because of the combination of mental and physical demands.

S4M 13y ago

You can try Chinese chess (xiang qi) or Japanese chess (shogi). I particularly like shogi because it has the rule that you can reuse the pieces of your opponent you capture. Both are a bit hard to learn though because the pieces are oriental characters.

se523 13y ago
Shogi is derived from xiangqi (same with Korean chess or janggi). And note that the characters are called hanzi or kanji (literally Chinese/Han characters), not oriental characters. It may be hard because the pieces don't have distinct shapes, but it's not after you learn/recognize the characters.

scott_s 13y ago

Chess 2 ( http://ludemegames.com/chess2/ http://ludemegames.com/chess2/). I'm not joking. USGamer has a good write-up on it: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid.

KVFinn 13y ago
>Chess 2 ( http://ludemegames.com/chess2/ http://ludemegames.com/chess2/). I'm not joking. USGamer has a good write-up on it: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel http://www.usgamer.net/articles/chess-2-the-sequel >I agree there's a certain amount of hubris behind the endeavor. But I'm interested in the design of balanced games, and the ways in which some old games are not balanced or rigid. The creator's blog post is quite entertaining, thought it was a joke but the game is quite real and looks interesting: >Chess 1 was a big hit, no question there, but a few issues have cropped up over the years. First, the original game ends in a draw uncomfortably often. Second, memorization (rather than on-the-spot intuition) ended up being much more important than the original developers intended. Even top players such as Fischer and Capablanca complained about this. Third, because it has no hidden information, the ability to capitalize on reading your opponent is more limited than it could be. And finally, the first version offered only a single army and one matchup. http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html >So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw. >ntuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd hope. http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
- lunaru 13y ago
  Since you bring up Sirlin, I would recommend Yomi, which is a card game that is very balanced and very competitive. I don't think it's as deep as chess, but I certainly enjoy playing it.

jedberg 13y ago

Have you tried Chess960[0] 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960

jmgregory 13y ago

Off the top of my head, if you're looking for deep two-player strategy with zero chance element, besides Go there's Othello (Reversi), Hive, Checkers, and Khet. If you're willing to put up with some chance, Backgammon and Battle Line can be very satisfying. For more than two players, take a look at Puerto Rico (finite but negligible chance) and Diplomacy.

protomyth 13y ago
Diplomacy is a very good group game that even works by (e)mail. Colonial Diplomacy was also pretty good, but it felt like a sprint compared to Diplomacy.
schoen 13y ago
Quoridor is a great abstract strategy game that doesn't seem to have beecome very widely known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoridor A lot of the subtlety comes in because of the rule that you can never completely obstruct the opponent's path to the goal, but you can try to make it as convoluted as possible. Hence people try to multiply the opponent's options (so that they can be closed off at the last minute) and limit their own options (so that the opponent isn't allowed to block their unique path to the goal).
- RBerenguel 13y ago
  One of the most underrated games I have seen. I rank it as Hex for me: two awesome games, very little known (at least there's a very good Hex strategy book)

Cthulhu_ 13y ago

Magic: the Gathering? It's a game of infinite possibilities and strategies and has a big meta game around it, too. Plus collectibles. Plus cool artwork. Plus good apps.

simon_renoult 13y ago
Plus - sadly - expensive.
GFischer 13y ago
(not the op) I love Magic: the Gathering and played on and off for 18 years now. It has two big downsides, the main one for me is that it's extremely expensive (a brand new console + collection of titles is equivalent in price to owning a couple of top tier decks). The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore. That said, yeah, building decks playing the metagame is very rewarding intellectually :) and having games 24/7 on Magic Online is great.
- RBerenguel 13y ago
  /The other one is that it's seen as uncool or childish or nerdish. I'd rather not mention it in workplaces anymore./ Not like Go, don't you think? (I do, been playing go for 10 years already)
phaus 13y ago
In some ways, the internet ruined games like MTG. I still like to play, but the widespread availability of tournament decklists stifles creativity. There are still formats where you see a wide variety of decks, but T2 play normally involves picking one of maybe 5 or 6 viable options.
- emidln 13y ago
  The netdeck argument is probably for a different site, but I strongly believe that MTG as a tournament format benefits enormously from widely available top-performing decklists, video and text coverage, and articles on deck strategy as well game tactics with particular decks or deck archetypes.

jmilloy 13y ago

I think Hive is the best chess "alternative". It feels lighter, but plays deeply and is never boring. It has an interesting geometric component. And there are annual championships. (Get the Hive Carbon edition, it's much nicer looking) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_(game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_(game)

2mur 13y ago
Yeah Hive is a great game and I love the bakelite pieces.

jimmahoney 13y ago

Pente.

damonk 13y ago

What about Chess960?

jrs99 13y ago

If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something. Go and no limit poker are getting massively popular. They are both like chess, but much less tactical and a lot more strategical games. In other words, computers can't beat the best players in these games yet. For whatever reasons, the status of games is somewhat related to whether they are "solved" by programs. Chess, like backgammon and checkers, is really on its way down. I love chess, and play it all the time, and same with many other games. But the allure goes down once it is solved. maybe all games will be figured out by software... but at the moment, no limit and go seem extremely exciting in terms of their possibilities/strategies.

schoen 13y ago
Although the best chess players are now computers, chess doesn't seem anywhere close to being solved in the formal game theory sense (where we know how to produce perfect play that can't be beaten even in principle). There was a gap of over a decade between a machine becoming the world checkers champion (1994) and checkers becoming a formally solved game (2007). (Impressively, both of these were achieved by the same person, Johnathan Schaeffer.) The difference, of course, is between "this machine can beat the best existing human player" and "this machine can beat any conceivable player as long as it's logically possible to do so". And right now we're at the former stage for chess (at least in some abstract sense: I'm not sure that a specific machine exists in operable condition that reflects the state of the art), but nowhere near the latter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess#Predictions_on_when.2Fif_chess_will_be_solved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess#Predictions_on_w...
- jrs99 13y ago
  yes, absolutely agree. that's what i mean by "solved" in quotes. i mean that computers can beat the best humans, not that the games are solved in the absolute sense like tic tac toe.
phaus 13y ago
>If you see many, many people getting obsessed with a game, and you think it's boring, it's usually a sign that you're not understanding something. I love chess, but this type of thinking is flawed. Using this logic, the Twilight movies are misunderstood masterpieces, Justin Beiber is the millennials' Mozart, and WWE style wrestling should be in the Olympics alongside the decathlon.

bionerd 13y ago

If you’re looking specifically for an alternative to Go or chess then be sure to have a look at a list of the so-called abstract board games (Go and chess belong to this category too) on the BoardGameGeek: http://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame http://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame (sorted by popularity by default) There are a few gems there that you might be interested in.

flud43 13y ago

You should really give No Limit Hold'em or Pot Limit Omaha a try. Poker is a game of astounding complexity once you start taking it seriously and it's quite fun. Combine that with the ability to take a small bankroll, $100 or whatever you're comfortable using as seed money, and turn it into a roll sufficient for high stakes poker (with enough dedication and time) and it truly does become quite an amazing game to play. I personally play heads-up poker. Unlike 9-handed poker, heads-up poker is constant action. It's more dependent on opponent profiling and maximizing expectation on the fly, using experience and statistics. A game of infinite variety. Since April I've taken $200 and, playing online and live poker, have profited in the following ways: +$6458 - online poker heads up matches +$2900 - rakeback/bonuses from pokerstars +$12500 - live tournaments and pot limit omaha cash And that's merely playing recreationally, completely separate from my full time job. You can play a complex, fun game and make money doing it. Who wouldn't enjoy that?

RRiccio 13y ago
I used to be a professional poker player, and although I agree that especially in the beginning -- while you're quickly evolving -- it's a lot of fun, after a while you do it for the money. It's very different from MTG, where me and my friends would play for the thrill of it, spending whatever little money we had to play. The easy test here is: would you play a poker tournament just for fun, if there was nothing at stake? Few people actually do it. The thrill in both cases actually is (or becomes) the money made/lost.
- flud43 13y ago
  If you aren't enjoying it anymore, you probably shouldn't be playing any longer. I didn't advocate playing only for the sake of making money. I suggested it because of how complex a game it is. How much time it takes to master. And because the potential rewards once you do are quite significant, which is a nice added bonus. And I'm not sure when you stopped playing (pre black friday?) but I don't think there's a single point at which I've ever stopped improving. I know many heads-up professionals as well and not a single one of them ever stops learning and improving their game. Stagnation in poker is death. As such, I don't know why you feel like it was a lot of fun at the start but lost that later on. There is always another level deeper you can go. The point of any game is to win. The metric that determines the winner of a game is different in every case. In poker, it's how much money you're making. But that doesn't have anything to do with the game itself. It merely depicts how well you're playing. Learning to maximize expectation with true mathematical finesse while factoring in accurate opponent profiling and gameflow is one of the most challenging things I've ever had to do gamewise. I've played chess since I was 5, Counter-Strike very seriously for five years, WoW for the first 3 years before it went to shit, and have been getting into Go. And in none of those games have I achieved the level of mental satisfaction as I have from poker. Edit: Was your stars alias RRiccio as well? Were you a cash player? You only have ~750 tournaments recorded on sharkscope.

gosukiwi 13y ago

Pretty unrelated but you can try online strategy games, personally I've played League of Legends for about two years and I still can't reach Diamond tier. LoL does require some mechanical skill but once you get it down, it's 90% knowledge. Another alternative is Magic The Gathering :) or HearthStone.

saraid216 13y ago
The discussion around Carlsen has led me to instinctively make comparisons to Starcraft professional play. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/How_to_Improve http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/How_to_Improve If you listen to commentators discussing matches, they can explain why certain decisions are gutsy, what the history of each player is (so-and-so is amazing at Medivac drops, so you expect that going into a game with him; so-and-so prefers the late game, so you'll never see him build proxy pylons), and the long-term ramifications of certain events (it doesn't seem like a big deal to lose 5 workers, just like a pawn sacrifice doesn't seem huge, but at the pro level of play, you'd better get something of equal or greater worth out of that; it doesn't seem like a big deal to know when Zerg builds their first extractor, but scouting that timing can tell you a lot about build order). > LoL does require some mechanical skill but once you get it down, it's 90% knowledge. At a certain point, LoL is about having teammates who you've worked with enough to anticipate and account for. There's a world of difference between baiting the carry and hoping your jungler will respond to your ping, and baiting the carry because you know there's three seconds until your jungler's dash is off cooldown. Personally, I get the shakes when I PvP in LoL so what decent mechanical skill I have kinda fractures. :( I miss watching LoL streams, actually; they stopped working for me.
- gosukiwi 13y ago
  The best thing to do is play like you don't care, so you dont tremble nor doubt to make plays. I've been playing LoL for more than two years, sitting in Platinum right now, still have a lot to learn, the most interesting thing is that LoL is still 90% strategy and knowledge.

petegrif 13y ago

Bridge

CatMtKing 13y ago

Since bridge was mentioned, how about majong? I could play either of them for hours on end.

sukuriant 13y ago
We should note for those that don't know, Cat is talking about real Mahjong, not the matching-game Mahjong that people know from 90's era computing.

girvo 13y ago

StarCraft. ;)

baq 13y ago

Arimaa can be played using a chess set: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/ http://arimaa.com/arimaa/. it's specifically designed to be hard for computers to play.