What abstract strategy games do you play?

[NonZeroSum]

I love playing cards, chess variants, checkers, dominoes, japanese shogi and go. Mostly play on my travels but there are websites you can get matched instantly with opponents from around the world who have a love of the intelectual challenge, you can chat midgame and forums where people like to debate, thought there would be good cross over, we could share our experiences and might even find fertile ground for new converts to veganism.

my nicks:
lichess.org/@/NonZeroSum
online-go.com
playok.com/en/shogi/

[brimstoneSalad]

That's a pretty good idea. The kinds of people who play these games are probably going to lean more liberal and cognitive, so it might be better ground than youtube.

The trouble is: How do you make sure you meet the same person multiple times?

[NonZeroSum]

On lichess if you had a good game with someone simply click follow and you're notified when they're online, you can challenge them to games, study strategy in real time board analysis with them. There are also small communities of people that pop up again and again around preferred time controls and the different chess variants. Then the tournaments and simultaneous exhibitions are big exciting group affairs to make a name for yourself and meet people.

With go start on a 5x5 board and work up, there's an active live forum board chat and in game chat.

It is interesting you mention cognitive, as left and right both use neuroscience to advance their own agenda, the right seeing it as justification for social Darwinism and the left for the uniqueness required for evolution to progress, encouraging a diversity of behaviors. I think some of Zizek's reflections on how we are ideological pattern seeking species will be informative to our intersectionality debate, it's got me picking up again the book Understanding Social Movements By Greg Martin about spontaneous emotion driven movements and resource management orientated ones. But must sleep now, will keep you posted.

[Red]

There's a game I'm looking to buy called 'Pit People.' I'm pretty sure it's strategy based, and I heard it has some immature humour. It has so far received pretty good reception.

Anyone hear about Civilization VI? Is it any good?

[brimstoneSalad]

Red, have you tried go? You might like it. It's meant to model military strategy. Easy to learn, very hard to master.

The classics will probably live on for quite a while. I'll admit that modern games can be pretty exciting/mentally challenging too, but I'm not sure how abstract some of them are.

[Red]

Go, eh? I'll give it a look. Is it fun?

[brimstoneSalad]

I like it. If you have a short attention span maybe not, it's not as exciting as computer games.

[Red]

I like it. If you have a short attention span maybe not, it's not as exciting as computer games.

( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)... What're you implying?

[NonZeroSum]

Oh my god championa!!

https://en.lichess.org/@/ZeMuffinMan
https://en.lichess.org/@/NonZeroSum
https://en.lichess.org/player/top/200/racingKings

I've been riding two accounts up to the top of the leader-board of this chess variant, one in correspondence games (over multiple days) and one in real time (5minutes + 5 seconds per move). Because the time-length changes the game a lot its okay to have two accounts - https://en.lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/more-than-1-nickname

I'm pretty stoked as a lot of memory and strategy goes into this, people share studies with each other contemplating 1000s of variations, and lapses in memory are so easy to make, but yea it's a an abstract strategy game with perfect information, so that means no chance, only if your opponents errors out-way your own can you win. And a ton of players are competing all the time the field is massive. At my level I get +1 for winning and -50 if I lose.

[brimstoneSalad]

-50 for a loss, that's pretty dramatic. It must be extremely hard to climb any higher, hard to understand how it works. Given the chaos of that kind of function, isn't the top level mostly luck based?