The Masked Carnie

I recently made a post on a message board about the importance of guessing games in strategic gaming, and thought it'd be nice to elaborate on such a point here.  In context, someone stated that he'd rather win in a fighter game (Street Fighter 4) by good fundamental play (referring to spacing, reaction, and combo skill) than win by what he perceived as random guesses.  My response: there are always guesses to be made.  Reaction is absolutely more valuable than prediction, but the ability to predict your opponent is vital.  It will be necessary at certain points, and I argue that it is necessary for any strategic game to be good.

I made a very surprising discovery yesterday.  After some guys in my game group would not let us use their Chess board, I went ahead and bought the only Chess set the store had.  When I first saw it, I thought it would just be a Chess board with some cards you keep by your side to illustrate how it plays.  While you could use it that way, it goes far out of its way to ease people into Chess in a way I would never have conceived.  I played it with someone close to my skill level (I'd say I'm a good casual player), and while we were skeptical about it, it turned out to be very interesting and fed into a different kind of mind-reading that we're actually used to.  I definitely recommend picking it up regardless of your skill level.  Read more to find out what makes this so special.