Go is hard

[trenton]

I have been playing a different board game. Apparently chess has more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe. Meanwhile, go has more possibilities than there are atoms raised to the power of the number of atoms. Go is much more mentally challenging and it isn't even close when compared to chess.

So far I am doing my best to make sense of why stones are placed the way they are. It usually involves deep calculations of moves that I don't know to consider. In my practice games the computer indicates that I am 100% lost within 7-10 moves and I am unable to see why I am lost until 70-80 moves later at which point I finally resign. I will continue trying to understand this game. It pushes me to high levels of concentration as I make several bad moves anyway.

I played one round with my sister, but she was too lazy to read the rule book. This alone demonstrates that the game is more challenging and complicated than chess. Now chess feels easy in the sense that I do not concentrate to the same degree yet I am in the top 1% of players on lichess.org. I wonder how good at chess I would be if I concentrated as much as I do While playing go.

Apparently there are players trying to unify chess and go by bringing them both to certain clubs. The games teach very different ways of thinking and helps to expand our minds as much as possible. Right now I am working with a chess in school program, but if it somehow integrated other board games, then it would stretch our minds as much as possible.

My mind is pretty worn out. At least this will help me appreciate how none of the strategies I use in chess are obvious at all. I see beginners making early flank expansions and rook moves all the time. I remember how differently I used to play chess. I used to move my rooks like that and it worked against my opponents. I was deeply concentrated yet making bad moves, but now I concentrate much less and make the "obvious" moves to win easily. It starts getting harder to push myself once I reach such a state of mind. My brain is doing the minimum effort and winning anyway. This is a sign of limited growth when I could be growing much more.

I wonder if there is some way to integrate chess and go. What would it take to make me concentrate that much in chess? I notice that sometimes I find interesting moves that are not objectively best. Once I play into such lines, I go into the unknown. Usually it is dangerous and I might lose. Then again, it is my highest capacity for growth should I play in such a style. It is usually an interesting middle game decision that is playable but unusual. I will look into this in chess as well.