One major contrast between said games is that Go is a game of creation, built on the concept of life. Chess, however, is an arena of destruction where mercy is not rewarded and the only goal of the game, as Fischer said, is to dominate your opponent. One thing I like about Go is the way that stronger players can go easy on a weaker players. I'm not at this level but I hear people talk about being able to jump into the game agressively and establish a winning advantage and then sit back and play passively to the end where you purposely win by 3.5 points. The nature of the game promotes coexistance; you realize quickly when learning that you can't get in the way of eveything your opponent tries to do, you can't kill all his stones, you can't prevent him from making some territory. Instead, what you're trying to do his allow your opponent to do whatever he wants, just as long as you end up just a little bit better off than him. In Chess, you can stop everything your opponent does and you can practially take all of his pieces. There is no "we both played well", rather one person lost and the other won. that's it. Because of this, I've seen a lot more arrogance and smacktalk type attitudes in Chess than in Go. I love the whole complex of the respect in Go. If someone beats you, its rude to be a bad sport and not except defeat, or too make excuses for why "I just played horribly that game",and you consider it an honor to beaten by a better player. Chess could use some of this.Bill Spight wrote:
Bobby Fischer talked about crushing his opponent's ego. Go humbles us all.
As for the question that was asked about key moves in Chess, consider this: There are around 230-250 moves in an average game of Go. There are around 30-50 moves in a typical game of Chess (a move in Chess means both sides moving once so double that number for the Go equivalent). The difference this makes is that moves in Chess are far more "heavy" or significant than a move in Go. Simply because the game takes place in fewer moves, that means there's a lot more happening with each move. So, when you play both games as much as I do, you learn to think of one chess move in relation to a sequence of Go moves. Say you invade the 3x3 and live in a tight space. That was well played though it didn't come down to one particular move. In Chess, you can make one move that's as signifcant as an invasion living, a group being attacked and killed etc. So to answer the question: yes. You can make moves in Chess that look like God-moves. They'll appear to come from no where until you understand what's happened an then you're an awe, wondering how on earth you missed it but even more curious, how did your opponent see it? That being said, the "best" moves in Chess are the little, very slow, seemingly innocuous moves that your opponent pays no more attention to than a snake quitely passing through the tall grass. You must always strive to understand why your opponent just did what he did. To quote Fischer again: "Good tactical combinations are the result of good, strategic planning".
