Go is an overall superior game than Chess.

Thank you, DakotaKrafick, for this important debate. I truly appreciate your passion for Go, and I hope that after this debate your appreciation of Chess can grow to match it. Per my opponent's terms, I will not offer rebuttals or responses to his case until the next Round. In this Round, I will only present my case for the superiority of Chess as opposed to Go. Chess is far more dynamicIn Go, once a stone is placed it cannot move, it is static. In Chess, the pieces are in constant flux, maneuvering to and fro as they attempt to complete objectives. Conceptually, Chess combines the spatial and temporal, whereas Go is only spatial. The constantly shifting style of Chess is more rewarding, and carries greater aesthetic possibilities. What's more, each piece carries a different function, giving the game an inherent sense of complexity: the potential choreography of differently functioning pieces generates, in and of itself, artistic possibilities lacking in Go. This brings me to my next point:Chess is deeper and more complex in a purely strategic senseTo think the sole purpose of chess is to checkmate the opposing King is much too reductive and simplistic. Unlike Go, where play is focused entirely around the grabbing of more spaces, in Chess the player's real goal is to create strategic inequalities, or what Jeremy Silman calls "imbalances." Some examples include: interplay of minor pieces (bishop vs knight), pressure on the queen-side as opposed to the king-side, superior mobility and space (Chess includes the same concept of territory that the entire game of Go is based on as just one strategic inequality among others), control of a key file or square, a lead in development, the initiative (similar to the concept of sente in Go), differences in pawn structure such as doubled pawns, isolated pawns, pawn chains, etc. The list goes on, but the point is always the same: chess play is about creating, locating, and taking advantage of, imbalances in a position. Contrast the dynamism and strategic complexity of Chess play with Go, where play focuses solely around annexing territories from your opponent. Chess is more tactical, exciting, and funIn Chess, a typical top level game might go like this: you sacrifice a pawn to gain space and activity, use that to attempt taking the center but fail because your opponent uses his extra pawn to retain control, you then reform, sacrifice a bishop, and attack on the queen-side, finally breaking through with your rooks, and immediately transferring the attack to the king's castle. You lose anyway, because inherent in every position is instability -- everything is in flux -- so your opponent mobilizes at the last moment a counter-attack against your king, who is left unprotected because your own attack extended too far. That kind of exciting dynamism, the back-and-forth of tactical blow after tactical blow, is practically non-existent in the game of Go, where games are less explosive and focus on the consolidation of territories instead of brutal all-in attacks. And yet, Chess also offers the slow, purely positional style of Go: extended strategic battles over a single square, building up microscopic advantages until one player's pressure overwhelms the other.Because Chess includes both tactical and positional styles of play, I say Chess is deeper. In Go, players cannot move their stones, which makes games focus solely on static structures. But in Chess, players negotiate between motion and stasis, the relative and the absolute. Conceptually and philosophically, Chess covers a vaster array of possibilities. The importance of each moveBecause the board is smaller, and the number of potential pieces is limited, each move and sacrifice in Chess is far more important than each move in Go. Typical Go games at the highest level last between 150 and 400 moves, whereas Chess games last between 20 and 60 moves. It is estimated that each Chess move is worth about 7 Go moves. This demonstrates the precision required to play Chess effectively, and the importance, care, and investment that goes into each move.As a result, Go allows players a lot more room for error and passivity, whereas in Chess, each moment of decision-making has a huge strategic and tactical significane in both the short-term and long-term.Psychological warfareA huge aspect of chess is creating threats that aren't true threats, but which nonetheless require the enemy's attention, lest they become true threats. For example, a player may line up a rook on the same file as the enemy's queen, or pin the enemy's knight against his/her king. There may be no immediate threat, but it looks dangerous and has the enemy worrying. Thing is, by reacting to the potential threat, players create new, perhaps real, threats.So in Chess, the strategy is often not to simply outright attack the enemy, but to overwhelm and confuse the enemy through false threats, scattering their forces until they fall apart. Chess is filled with these kinds of psychological tactics. In Go, on the other hand, false threats and decoys of this kind are non-existent. Go players surely get anxious, but the use of psychological tactics itself is not part of the game's repertoire of possibilities. No luck in ChessChess is completely skill-based. But in Go, there is something known as a "lucky win," even at the top level of play. Players often lose in Go despite having played better than their opponents. Some players have even tried to figure out why luck is so present in Go, doing statistical and game-theoretic analyses on the game. [1] To me, it seems that a purely skill-based game is superior to a game that also includes luck, so I conclude Chess better on this point.Chess is more difficultGo has a 19x19 board and has a larger number of positions. I grant Pro that much. But more squares and possibilities, in and of itself, does not make Go more complex and more difficult. There are so many other factors at play in Chess, the huge number of strategic imbalances, the constant shifting of the pieces and need for re-evaluating positions, the psychological elements, the huge care that must be taken on every move, the tension between all these strategies and the brute facts of tactical attack. Think about it this way: if Go is played on a 9x9 board, which it sometimes is, then Chess is clearly the more complex and difficult game. There is no contest when the number of squares is even: Chess is more difficult and complex. Extend that logic: why not double or triple the number of squares, and you'll have a game twice as complex? Because increasing the number of squares/positions does not make the game any more complex or better than before. Point is, a game's strategic complexity is not determined by quantity of possibilities, but by the qualitative elements inherent to the game. In Go, it is the simplicity of static stones controlling space. In Chess, it is the terrifying complexity of differently functioning pieces in constant flux. It may be an opinion, but Chess clearly beats out Go in terms of complexity and difficulty.VictoryChess presuppses democratic equality of the players, and therefore, a draw is possible. This is essential to a game like Chess and Go, because it is very plausible that the two players play a perfect game, in which case a draw is the correct outcome.But in Go, you cannot draw. Unfortunately, often the win is not convincing. The game is decided by the .5 point advantage granted by Komidashi. It may even be the losing player who made the more impressive plays. Go thus presupposes inequality, and ends up being unfair. Unlike Go, a win in Chess is decisive. You checkmate the King, get checkmated, or draw. Any difference in skill must be proven in Chess, but in Go difference of skill is presupposed. I conclude Chess is fair, Go unfair.ConclusionChess is deeper, psychological, democratic, fair, and offers greater aesthetic and conceptual possibilities.[1] http://senseis.xmp.net...