Jo-Go is the ultimate tactical board game. If you like chess, you'll love Jo-Go. If you hate chess, you'll still love Jo-Go. The game is deceptively simple, yet complex enough to stimulate your visual skills for ages to come. There's even a handicapping system to let beginners play advanced players and compensate both fairly. Fun, stimulating, and educational, Jo-Go is perfect for visual skill development with the pattern recognition used in the moves.
Some believe it to be the perfect "off-season" trainer for games such as chess since it teaches you to position your pieces for both offensive and defensive action and quickly shows you the consequences of a misplaced capture of an opponent's piece. But it's much more than that. It's a thinking game that will get your right and left brain working together.
Both players receive eight pieces with 1-5 beads on each piece's pole. Each piece moves in a set pattern. If your opponent passes one of their pieces over you in the course of it's assigned movement pattern, you lose 1 bead. If they land on you, you lose 2 beads and you switch places if your piece still has beads remaining. If the players are at different playing abilities, you can even handicap the more experienced player by giving the newcomer 1 or 2 extra beads on each piece at the start of a game.
The computer has 3 levels of difficulty to play against and with the unique handicapping system you can try out the harder levels with a little extra help in the form of extra beads for your pieces. Beginners can use this system to play advanced players by taking an extra bead and then adjusting the ratings calculation as if the player with more beads was actually higher ranked to begin with. This is featured in the PBEM (play-by-email) system. Come sign up for a free account today and play anyone in the world. Jo-Go really is a better game!