[purpled_haze]

The comment about chess is just astounding to me:

"The queen, which can move horizontally, vertically or diagonally, is nothing more than a combination of the rook and the bishop, making it an inelegant redundancy."

Whoever stated that has never played chess to the level they should before even attempting to comment on the game.

Chess would seem to me to be one of the ultimate games for humans; it's simple enough to teach a child, but few adults can come close to mastering it.

Even the term "chess master" is a bit of a lie. To be a "chess master", you'd have to know the perfect solution move for every board configuration- forget openings, gambits, tactics- that's child's play compared to truly mastering the game. People called "masters" are just really damn good- not perfect.

In comparison, I am a "tic tac toe" master. I know that I can fail to lose at the game if I try.

[lmm]

Chess is an inelegant ruleset. The en passant rule is an extremely obvious bodge, castling is a special case and the rule wording had issues as recently as the 1970s. A sibling has already mentioned go, which is far more elegant and humanistic (I understand it involves substantially more left-brain use). High-level chess as practiced today involves a lot of rote memorization which is very anti-human (part of the reason computers are better at it now).

/Played chess reasonably seriously at one point and I still enjoy it occasionally, but let's be honest about its flaws

[witty_username]

> I understand it involves substantially more left-brain use

Smells like nonsense stemming from the "mathematical left-brain, artistic right-brain" myth.

[Zikes]

Regardless of scientific truth, it still has colloquial value.

[purpled_haze]

> Chess is an inelegant ruleset.

En passant and castling may seem inelegant to you, but to me they make it more interesting. Also, Chess is an Olympic sport, you can find people almost anywhere ready to play with you, and it has a rich history. The board and pieces are a chance for art that I've not seen in Go. I'd rather play a game that is interesting, but basic, that models the complexity of life and its political and caste dynamics, and that's fun to play on any level. It also enlightens us to the fact that humans cannot beat computers at strategy when computers are given sufficient time and resources (because we can't).

[lmm]

> you can find people almost anywhere ready to play with you

Depends where you are and on your circle of friends.

> The board and pieces are a chance for art that I've not seen in Go.

That seems like making a virtue of necessity. I always found the fancy carved sets harder to play with than a basic one, though YMMV. And there are certainly beautiful antique Go sets, though it's maybe a more austere kind of beauty. But you can play it with a pen and paper and a pile of paperclips and staples if you have to, which is a bigger advantage to my mind.

> I'd rather play a game that is interesting, but basic, that models the complexity of life and its political and caste dynamics

Go is more basic than chess and at least as interesting, and grounded very much in politics. It reflects a culture in which control over territory is the most important thing (farmland is scarce in Japan), and is all about the subtle nuances of power projection - the difference between occupying a place and controlling it.

> and that's fun to play on any level.

Huh? It's much easier to have an interesting beginner game of Go than Chess - the rules are simpler and there are not really any openings to memorize, no four-move mate or Queen stampeding around the board. Even as a complete beginner in Go, your tactics may be poor, but you're playing the same strategic game as an expert. It also has a much more practical handicap system - between club-level chess players even a pawn is a massive advantage, so you can only have close games between players of very similar ability, whereas in Go a player who's two ranks ahead can just take a two stone handicap.

> It also enlightens us to the fact that humans cannot beat computers at strategy when computers are given sufficient time and resources (because we can't).

That seems a bizarre thing to base your choice of game on.

[purpled_haze]

> Depends where you are and on your circle of friends.

chess.com

> I always found the fancy carved sets harder to play with than a basic one

Me also.

> That seems a bizarre thing to base your choice of game on.

It was a response to a criticism, not basis for choosing to play Chess.

[lmm]

> chess.com

Plenty of equivalents for any number of games.

> It was a response to a criticism, not basis for choosing to play Chess.

Fair enough. In that case I'd say: computers aren't yet better than humans at strategy in general; real world conflict doesn't have an openings book (which is where computers get a lot of their advantage in chess) or indeed an endings book, and in that sense go is a better reflection of the state of the art, and the way computers gain an advantage in go will be closer to the way they will gain an advantage in real conflict.

Yes, that computers are better than humans at rote memorization is a fact worth remembering - but playing a game of rote memorization is still an unpleasant, anti-humanistic experience.

[amalcon]

The queen is absolutely an inelegance from a rules perspective. That seems to be kind of the point: rules elegance is neither necessary or sufficient to create a good game (though, arguably, it helps: see Go). Having a single piece with far more offensive power than any other is interesting, which is good in actual gameplay.

The queen is absolutely the wrong thing to pick on, though. Castling would be an obvious example, but my go-to is En passant. The pawn double-move is obviously inelegant (sharing the problem with castling that it may only ever be a piece's first move), but it inarguably makes the game better. If you've ever tried playing without it, you know that it makes the opening both faster and more interesting.

However, the pawn double-move introduces a strategic problem where a pawn can sometimes skip past another. The en passant rule is thus introduced as an obvious fix for that bug.

It would be problematic to have either of these rules without the other, and neither is particularly elegant, but the combination improves the game a lot.

See also: the infield fly rule in Baseball, the shot clock in any sport that has a shot clock, I'm sure anyone can name several more.

[heydenberk]

The rules of chess are, in fact, complicated and inelegant compared to the rules of Go.

[Eric_WVGG]

"Castling" had to have been invented by some brat prince who liked to just make up shit and nobody had the stones to say "No" to.

[kqr]

IIRC it as invented to get the rooks out on the board quicker. Normally, it takes like four moves to properly get them out there (1. move pawn out of the way, 2. move rook ahead, 3. slip rook out through the side, 4. move rook onto the board.) With castling you can greatly reduce this if you've opened up the middle already.

[Eric_WVGG]

Interesting!

[lazyant]

I'll counter that, I read a couple of Go books and I'm still not clear of when the game ends or how you count points, go is very elegant but let's not pretend all its rules are simple and clear.

[lmm]

The game ends when both players pass. That's very simple and clear.

You score by counting the number of unoccupied points in your territory and adding the number of your opponent's stones you captured, + the "komi" that the second player gets to make up for going second (usually 6.5 for a full size board). (A common technique is to place all the stones you captured on empty points in your opponent's territory, so that you're subtracting the number of your captures from their territory). The only possible ambiguity there is around what constitutes territory; if you like then as a beginner you can just make the rule "unoccupied points in regions surrounded entirely by stones of your colour", which will make for a few tedious turns at the end where you fill in the last few gaps but won't change the scoring at all.

[kqr]

The rules are simple and clear – their consequences are not.

The game ends when both players have passed in succession. Each player may pass whenever they want. That's it. It's super clear. Figuring out when you can safely pass? That takes years of study. But essentially it is a strategic decision, not part of the rules. You can pass throughout the entire game, it would just be a really dumb strategy.

Regular players make counting points more advanced than it has to be in the interest of speed (similar to how mental maths tricks can be very advanced ways of computing simple sums or products).

The score is determined by the number of pieces you can put down on the board. That's it. (From this follows, of course, that empty intersection your opponent has solidly surrounded is probably not going to count toward your score because your opponent can kill whatever you try to play in there.)

[kqr]

Especially with the modern variants in play in competitive games, such as en passant capture and the like. Many fairly enthusiastic chess players aren't exactly sure what all the rules are.

[hollerith]

Not counting online games, I've played many 100s of games of chess with many dozens of people, mostly strangers, incl 12-year-olds (when I was 12) and not once did a dispute or difference of opinion arise about the legality of any move (incl en-passant moves).

What is the name of this strange country where players who are not just starting out don't know the rules of chess?

[lmm]

Here in the UK I have had to call a referee over during a tournament because my opponent didn't know about en passant. And it turned out said referee didn't know either (fortunately the other players backed me up).

[danharaj]

Ko variations and scoring rules are kind of inelegant in Go as well. Having to determine life and death under certain scoring systems can be painful for beginners.

[gizmo686]

I agree slightly about Ko (although it does not seem that inelegant to say that you cannot repeat a board position). However, this scoring complications are entirely a result of players being lazy, the game would be equivalent if you played until the person whose turn it is had no legal moves.

This ruleset would be prohibitivly tedious, but (in Japanese scoring) if you play with the rule that passing requires you to give your opponent an extra captured stone, then the game become equivalent to one where players were required to capture all the stones they thought were dead.

This is even simpler under Chinese scoring, where you would not even have to give your opponent pass stones.

However, because players are lazy, their is no reason to waste time killing dead stones.

Having said that, I can think of 2 inelegences that you did not mention:

Komi, where we give White extra points just because Black was winning to often.

The overtime rules in timed games.

[vacri]

The real problem with chess is that it takes a lot of time and effort to become even vaguely competitive. It's not a boardgame you can pull out for a group of naifs and all start having fun together.