I've been learning to play Go the last couple of days and it's pretty cool. There are only maybe two or three rules (and one of them is effectively just 'don't put the game in an infinite loop, you jerk'), but there's a lot of complexity that just comes out of the basic spatial relationships of the pieces. You want to encircle sections of the board, grapple for territory, set up traps for later, create threats to your opponent's pieces (which you might cash in on now, or just leave dangling over them), and try to force your opponent into making lose-lose decisions. In which I frequently somehow manage to pick a third, worse option.
Something that's interesting to me is how many games kinda just... don't have a formal end state. It's more like you both look at the board and go "yep, it'd be pointless to keep going". Depending on how securely everyone has entrenched themselves, it might be impossible for either of you to take more board space from the other. Or maybe one of you has just ended up in a position where playing any more pieces would only result in losing by a larger margin. It makes me wonder what it's like to play with strangers online, where there's nothing to stop you rudely (or naively) insisting on continuing a game that you've effectively already lost.
Stay tuned for my hot takes on, I dunno, chess? I don't like chess. Everyone just assumed I'd be good at it when I was a kid because I was a weird nerd. Turns out there's more to it than that.
