&gt; you can find people almost anywhere ready to play with you<p>Depends where you are and on your circle of friends.<p>&gt; The board and pieces are a chance for art that I&#x27;ve not seen in Go.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>&gt; I&#x27;d rather play a game that is interesting, but basic, that models the complexity of life and its political and caste dynamics<p>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.<p>&gt; and that&#x27;s fun to play on any level.<p>Huh? It&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s two ranks ahead can just take a two stone handicap.<p>&gt; 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&#x27;t).<p>That seems a bizarre thing to base your choice of game on.