Life In 19x19

A single game of Go is a contest of skill. There is no element of chance. In the majority of positions, one side or the other has a large enough advantage that sufficiently skilled player will win 100% of the time.

Obviously this is rarely the case in backgammon. Little old me will win a fair percentage of single games against the best players in the world, even from inferior positions. That is why the cube adds new skils (in multigame matches): judging the take/drop point, estimating gammons, judging the value of cube ownership, figuring match equity, etc. In Go, the cube would add no skill whatsoever: it would only double gambling stakes, or maybe rating stakes.

OK, I might play a single game of gammon once in a while - but only as a diversion, never as a mental challenge. I might also play a game of Monopoly for fun - but I wouldn't think of it as a contest of skill.

Monopoly is actually a contest to see how strong your relationship with your SO is...

daniel_the_smith wrote:Monopoly is actually a contest to see how strong your relationship with your SO is...

Not just your significant other, it is true for ALL relationships.

Yeah, a doubling cube would be an interesting addition to bangneki I guess--I've never played bangneki, and have no interest in doing so, so I can't be sure. I'm not going to argue that bangneki is a bad way to play--it's just not something for me.

I think even if you agree that in some third-personal sense, you can view the result of a go game as luck (how did you sleep, how is your attention), this is not the subjective experience of playing Go. Whereas with backgammon, for all the skill it involves (and there's a lot), there is still the point where you say "now I must wait for the dice". That's why even though a single game of Go isn't proof of who's stronger, it's self-contained, in a way that the single game of backgammon isn't.

I'm not sure if self-contained is the right word, but I think there's an important distinction here, and closely connected to the reason why the doubling cube would be a bizarre addition to ordinary Go.

zinger wrote:OK, I might play a single game of gammon once in a while - but only as a diversion, never as a mental challenge.

I only play single games (when I play several in a row, I don't think of it as a match with a cumulative score). And yet I see it as a mental challenge. Why not? You still have to make the best moves. The only difference from Go is that you can consistently make better moves than the opponent and still lose. Is this really such a big deal? If anything, I think this aspect of Backgammon teaches the value of striving for good moves as opposed to striving for victory, which seems like a good approach to Go as well.

In my opinion, games of chance also require a great deal of skill. It's just that once in awhile, despite your skill, it's inevitable that you don't get the best scenario thrown at you.

It's kind of repeats like this:

Outside stimulus --> Make decision --> Make action

With a game that has a luck factor, you might get some pretty tough outside stimulus thrown at you. If you are "unlucky", it can seem very difficult to win. But still, despite what you get from the environment, a good player can make a good decision and try to make the best action possible considering his situation.

There has to be some element of decision for a game to be fun, though. Having a coin flipping contest with a single (fair) coin doesn't really do much for me...