Chess With Folding Board

A game that continues to surprise and delight me. In an era dominated by the cult of the new, also a cautionary reminder of how difficult it can be to properly assess a game based on a single play (I'd probably have rated this a 4 or 5 initially), and of how much we may be missing out on if we always pursue novelty at the expense of expertise.

Perfectly streamlined, easy to learn difficult to master, endless replayability and works just as well online as OTB. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Very Intense battle for victory, so much to learn and a display of pure skill. Would definitely recommend easy to pickup but hard to master. Will always be a favourite.

Giving a rating to this sort of game is silly; you might as well give a rating to a galaxy or to a period of human history. Games like Chess and Go are too big and require too much investment for the normal game-to-game comparisons of hobby gaming to have any meaning. If you are only going to play 10-20 times and never look at any strategy books then Chess is probably a 2/10 game. But if you dive into it you get a whole new world of ideas that will bring you massive amounts of pleasure, fascination, frustration, and misery for the rest of your life.

Chess isn’t my favorite board game but I deeply respect it that it’s the most strategically deep game of all time AND you finish it in 10 minutes— it’s very nice to keep things in perspective. Granted- I don’t want every game I play to be deterministic. Random elements added in modern board games leave a nice margin for error when playing that chess does not offer.