Traditional games: Besides CHESS: What are the best in the world?

I was just curious if people are passionate about any ancient, traditional real-life games (whether played digitally or physically, I don't care).

Myself, I mostly only love chess, and I play / practice chess everyday. It think it's absolutely the best game ever, in the Western world.

And I think that's actually pretty much undisputed, but I've heard that Asian tradition has possibly 2 or 3 games that are on-the-level with Western chess. "Go" is one such example, and "Chinese Chess" is another, I've been told.

Can anyone vouch for such games, and are there any other games that you'd consider on the level with Western chess?

Thanks in advance to any responses.

Hands down Backgammon for me. Just don’t play for money!

a reply to: JamesChessman

Many come and go, chess stays!

Funny, I recently messed up a date when I asked her if she plays chess

a reply to: JamesChessman

Royal game of Ur always looked fun to me.

link


I've never actually played it but it sticks in my memory because it seems to have a good mix of strategy and luck. You sound like an established chess player, do you find it to be more of a memory game than competitively challenging?

My experience with decent chess players always left the impression it was about memory, the game lost magic for me when I figured that out.

a reply to: JamesChessman

Yahtzee!!

Many hours lost on that one.

Cards!

Can play alone, with 1 other person, 2,3,4,10.

Extremely versatile, hundreds of variants of thousands of games.

It’s social, it brings people together, it tears them apart.

It can make you a millionaire, it can cost you your house.

Anyone can play, from the young to the old, or the young vs the old.

They can even perform magic.

I could go on for ever

a reply to: JamesChessman

I love chess, too, although I haven't played in a while.

I think the only game that could top standard chess is 3D Chess...

en.m.wikipedia.org...

I love Chess and Backgammon too. But the GO TO for me in college way way back was
RISK!

Take over the world. Learn of the pressure points on the ground that make it possible to defend a continent.

But most important you learn diplomatic steps very fast. You have to obtain détente sometime or you and/or your new found ally will lose early.

Checkers....
Not as complicated as Chess , yet just as strategic.
And has been around , oh thousands more years longer than Chess.

(I added this as I just saw a post about Ur)

Checkers, the little sibling of chess for 1 on 1s. The board I have is from the 50s or so. Risk, for bigger groups. I own the classical edition with the shaped wood bricks instead of the plastic soldiers.

And for the kids, "ludo", or like we call it "Human! Don't get angry!". Because it can make you angry...

Yahtzee is satisfying my counting OCD very nice too.

There is only one greatest game and it is not chess


It is GO. The greatest of all board games

a reply to: JamesChessman

Play through this my chesshead amigo

How to play go

D&D for me. For me, no other game made me think about playing a game, when I wasn't playing it. You can be anything and do anything. If you enjoy just a little bit of fantasy and imagination, then you MUST give it a try.

Thanks to everyone for responses, I really didn't expect much response at all.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: JamesChessman

Royal game of Ur always looked fun to me.

link

I've never actually played it but it sticks in my memory because it seems to have a good mix of strategy and luck. You sound like an established chess player, do you find it to be more of a memory game than competitively challenging?

My experience with decent chess players always left the impression it was about memory, the game lost magic for me when I figured that out.

^Interesting questions in the quoted post.

Well first, I love chess, but I'm not really "established" in the sense of competitive play, nor was it really ever my goal to be competitive about it, really.

I think originally I was drawn to the beauty, and the mystery, of the chessboard (we had a small standing table, with a marble chessboard inlaid). But it turned out that my family really didn't play, and so when I was younger, I mostly never had a chance to play with anyone. I would try with my family once in a great while, but they really didn't get into it.

Later, in my 20's, I gained one good friend that I play chess with, when we can get together (during the past nearly 20 years, we're middle-aged now).

Ironically I've met a 2nd guy who plays chess, but he really is about collecting board games in general, so I don't think he particularly loves chess, and really, I don't think he loves or respects anything at all, lol. So that was a disappointing failed friendship, haha, and so I really have just my one old friend to play chess with.

However, I've also spent time playing chess with computers for a few years now. I used to play people online (chess.com) for a few years. To be clear my ranking was never anything notable, lol, so I'm really just about the love of the game.

Anyway I did that a few years, some live matches against people around the world (which I really enjoyed that geographical aspect of it). Also I'd run several turn-based matches against various people, so each match would span days or weeks, and we could just respond at our leisure.

Eventually I stopped online chess, and the last several years I've been mostly just playing / practicing chess with my Mac itself (Apple desktop), because macOS includes chess, nicely built-in. (Windows doesn't; I've checked, lol).

So that's most of my chess playing, the last recent years: Apple Chess on the hardest difficulty, so I can practice playing against AI that's entirely smarter than me, lol.

Besides just straight playing chess on my Mac, there are also hints, to see what my Mac thinks are the best moves, and then I can try to see what the Mac is thinking behind its suggestions (as a way of just practicing and improving my own vision and gameplay, hopefully).


.........


But to answer your question: I don't think chess is necessarily based on memory, very much... I think it's mainly based on clear VISION of the chessboard, PLUS our ability of imagination, of the possible future moves.

So it's basically a deep meditation, and the whole chessboard is the meditation aid (like how the Tibetan Buddhists create beautiful crazy mandalas to stare at for meditation).

Chess meditation is 2 different meditations at the same time. 1. is the ability to clearly perceive the chessboard. 2. is the ability to ALSO engage our imagination, and overlay our imagination, onto the board's clear perception.

I think it's profound because usually our mind is really one or the other, perceiving things, OR getting lost in our imagination.

Chess combines and harmonizes these 2 different functions of our mind, in my opinion.

a reply to: JamesChessman

Don’t skip over my post. If you want the game you are looking for watch the go video. 4000 year old board game.

I have to work or I would write more in depth

originally posted by: Cymru
a reply to: JamesChessman

Yahtzee!!

Many hours lost on that one.

I love Yahtzee. But I grew up in a house with a total of ten children over time, so the more people that could play a game the better suited the game was for the group.

I also like Backgammon, Rummikub, and Cribbage. I dabbled a bit in Bridge, and a few other card games, but I don't think it matters much, I like games. Board games, word games, math games, any type of game.

originally posted by: TheAlleghenyGentleman
There is only one greatest game and it is not chess


It is GO. The greatest of all board games

Thank you. I'm really not familiar myself, except I've heard people express your same sentiment. So I will put some time into this, at some point.

(By the way, to be clear, I only claimed chess as the greatest game in the Western world. I'm completely open-minded that Go and maybe other Asian games, are possibly on the level, or even better.)

a reply to: JamesChessman

When I have time later I have an introductory email I send to my friends who are interested in learning the game. I will post it here.

a reply to: JamesChessman

Mahjong

My mom told me this game was the mother of all gambling and forbade me to play it, which of course made me want to play it more! I was pretty good at it too.

originally posted by: Tekaran
D&D for me. For me, no other game made me think about playing a game, when I wasn't playing it. You can be anything and do anything. If you enjoy just a little bit of fantasy and imagination, then you MUST give it a try.

I like this answer .