Why Abstract Strategy Games Are Worth Your Time
Most games mix skill with luck. Rolling dice, drawing cards, and random events make outcomes unpredictable regardless of how well you play. Abstract strategy games remove all of that. The result is a different kind of experience.
Every Loss Is Fixable
In a dice game, you can play perfectly and lose. The feedback is noise. In Chess or Raichu, if you lose, a mistake caused it. You can find the mistake. You can understand it. You can not make it again.
That feedback loop is the engine of improvement. Every game is a test, and every test has correct answers you can study afterward. Progress is real and traceable.
Skill Compounds
In luck-based games, a beginner can beat an expert on a good day. In zero-luck games, a significantly stronger player wins close to 100% of the time. This means skill is real and durable.
The skills also transfer. Pattern recognition, planning several moves ahead, calculating material trades, managing threats: these thinking patterns carry from Chess to Go to Raichu and back. Time invested in one game makes you better at all of them.
No Expansion Packs
Chess has not changed in a meaningful way since the 15th century. Go has been played in the same form for over a thousand years. The game you learn today is the same game you will play in twenty years.
No power creep. No meta shifts from new card sets. No version updates that obsolete what you learned. The investment in learning is permanent.
The Depth Never Bottoms Out
Tic-tac-toe is a zero-luck game, but it is solved: both players playing correctly always draw. Chess and Go are not solved at human level. Neither is Raichu. The practical depth is effectively unlimited.
At every skill level, there is a meaningful opponent above you. The game stays interesting as long as you do.
Where to Start
If you have not played an abstract strategy game seriously, start with a short one. Raichu takes five minutes to learn and fifteen minutes to play. The hierarchy of three pieces is simple enough that you can focus on thinking rather than memorizing rules. From there, move to Chess, then Go.