Yawn a more roman way

[argon_vile]

A haggardly bum looking guy in a bookstore started arguing about with me about how chess was more complicated than go. His first argument went along the lines of "look at how many people play it over here... i don't see anyone playing go... because chess is a more complicated game" and then he moved onto "well in chess, you're trying to capture

Comments

[pessen]

I don't know about you, but I know there are certain types of games that I think I'm just naturally better at than others. I like to think I picked up Axis and Allies pretty quickly but it seems like no matter how many games of chess I play, I never get any better. I also seem to be better at the New Tetris than Tetris Attack even though I think I've put in comparable time in both games.

Maybe you're like that in some respects too?

New Tetris v Tetris Attack

[argon_vile]

I think i've played more Tetris Attack than you, and I think you've played more New Tetris than me. That said i agree with your point about someone's "natural ability". I tend to think skill at Tetris Attack boils down to how much time your brain has spent solving Tetris Attack-like problems. But sometimes your brain will just not learn something no matter how much time you dedicate! It's frustrating though, I feel like I should be able to tell my brain to do something, and it should do it... like controlling my arm, or any other part of my body.

Re: New Tetris v Tetris Attack

[pessen]

Yeah, I agree. There are just some things that my brain isn't very good at picking up. I don't think I'll ever be good at a game like Set, for instance, no matter how much practice I got at it. I might get a little better than I am now, but never at the level you guys play at.

[arichnad]

don't argue combinatorics. unlike go, a chess game has a possible length of infinity. also, because the chance of a game taking an infinite length is non-zero, the theoretical average game length is also countably infinite (although in practice all chess games with human players eventually end).

even though my argument is correct, it's also very dumb. the combinatorics of the game is pretty irrelevant to its complexity when it comes to learning strategy.

i think the complexity of the games should be measured by their sizes on wikipedia. go wins with 26kb in html (chess loses with 25kb in html)! :)

combinatorics

[argon_vile]

Well, if you're trying to think like 3 moves ahead, for example, Go is much more complex than chess. There's more possibilities of things to guess. That's also not a good reason to say it's a more complex game though. By that logic, the "i'm thinking of a number 1 to 1,000,000" game is the ultimate complex game of all time!

I know scientists have a lot more trouble beating the Go problem with brute force, than they do beating the chess problem. I guess that's what I was trying to communicate.

[vtsamvt]

Re: combinatorics

[argon_vile]

yes!