Lee Edwards
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
http://pages.prodigy.net/lee_edwards/

Go

The deepest and most esthetically pleasing board game. Online players don't have to worry much about cheating with computers because the programs aren't good enough yet. My favorite Go books are The Direction of Play by Takeo Kajiwara, The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata, and Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch'i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy by Scott Boorman.

If Go is the ultimate game of strategy and war, then chess is the ultimate game of battle tactics. Like music, mathematics, art and cryptography, Chess attracts genius. The "gymnasium of the mind" has the most extensive literature and culture of any game.

Refreshing, whimsical, paradoxical, and delightfully counter-intuitive.

The pieces are weaker individually than in Western chess, the game seems somewhat slow to develop, and the rules are somewhat arbitrary and complicated; but you don't get locked pawn structures as in Western or international chess, and draws are rare. What makes Shogi different is the drop rule. When you capture your opponent's piece, it becomes your piece and you get to drop it on your next or any subsequent move, subject to certain restrictions. This "one-handed bughouse" feature gives Shogi its distinctive character and has made the game fiendishly difficult for the programmers.

Choice five was between backgammon, Chinese Chess (Xiang Qi), and checkers. I chose backgammon because it adds a stochastic element. My pal Paul Weaver is a great player.

Desert Island Board Games Index