I am looking for strategy board games similar to Chess and Go. I am trying to find those which have very deep strategy level. I have looked through the advanced search but I didn't have much luck in finding games similar to Chess and Go. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Are you looking for Abstract Strategy games? The kind with no theme, just pieces you move around? If so, then I suggest the Gipf series. Of which Yinsh seems to be the best.

Although, there are games that do have theme, and are deep and require alot of thinking to play well. If you're at all interested in this kind of game, then I suggest Tigris and Euphrates, Louis XIV, or Goa. All playable 2 player or multiplayer with good themes and deep play.

Let us know what you think.

I also recommend that you check out the GIPF series of games if you're looking for strategy board games similar to Chess and Go. You can read more about the series at:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Project_GIPF

I particularly enjoy both YINSH ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/7854) and DVONN ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2346), but think you should also consider the other four games in the series.

Take a look at Hive too while you're at it. The play is very chess-like.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browser.php?itemtype=game&sortb...

Here's a heap of them:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1038

I completely recommend the GIPF games.

Shogi (Japanese chess) is worth checking out also.

How about trying Shogi?

That's very handy Matthew! How did you find/create that list?

a) Go to Chess - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/171
b) Click on 'Abstract Strategy' - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browser.php?itemtype=game&sortb...
c) Click on 'By Rank' - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browser.php?itemtype=game&sortb...

If you are going for "very deep strategy level similar to Go", I highly recommend Hex. I wrote a review for it.

Another game with deep strategy is Oware (a specific version of Mancala family games). There is a lot more strategy than it may appear upon first plays. They call it the "chess of Africa", and very deservingly so. By the way shouldn't we have a different entry for Oware? Seriously.

If you are looking for games similar to chess, Shogi and XiangQi are decently deep but not nearly as deep as western chess.

Hive is also somewhat chess-like but it's not overly deep. I wrote some strategy articles for it.

If you are looking for "lighter" connection/Go-like games, you should look into the GIPF series and Go-Moku. I wrote a review for the latter. These are about as deep as Othello, another one you could consider.

Another way to find a selection of games is using the Tags feature of the search box. Click on the drop-down list within the Search box, usually set at "Games", and change it to "Tags". The more traiditonal games resemble chess and go the most: enter "traditional abstract" (without quotes) and click "Go" to find them.

More modern abstracts have a greater variety of mechanics. You can leave "traditional" out of the search term to find these, or just follow some of the other suggestions already posted.

I can't recommend Lines of Action highly enough.

Also you might like to check out Chase which has been described as Chess with dice (Don't worry, there's no luck element).

Cannon is also rather enjoyable.

I once made a list of my recommendations:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/9265

Thanks to everyone for their help. I am looking for traditional strategy games with no theme. I have read that chess has 8 depth levels, and Go has much more than that at least more than 10. Are there any traditional strategy games which contain more depth levels.

I think Go is the deepest game there is, and Chess follows closely after that.

I've never played it, but maybe Gonnect? The deepest games I can think of are Hex (use a larger sized board, say 19x19 as opposed to the standard 11x11), and Oware.

These "levels" can only be defined very fuzzily, but I agree with the Gonnect suggestion. I also imagine that Twixt would prove to have greater depth than Hex or The Game of Y, which are related.

I'd second the above recommendation for Cannon. For those recommending Shogi and Chinese Chess, there are several free and open source computer versions out there that you might want to try to see how you like 'em...

Try one game from this list http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/2778 or from the great list by CDRodeffer http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1038.

For very deep games I would suggest Arimaa or Shogi (it is completely false that they are shallower than chess). Somewhat lighter, but still great are Hive, Cannon and Yinsh.

Arimaa uses a chess board, but is very cool.

You may also want to check out Hnefatafl (Or Tablut or some other variation.)

There are enough strategy games out there to choke any number of
horses. Chess is the tip of a very large iceburg. There are
a couple of other unquestionable juggernaughts such as Go and Shogi.

After that, there are lots and lots of games that deserve a lot
more attention than they are getting. You can pay some I've selected
at my site, Boardspace.net, but I'm not going to claim a monopoly
on good games.

I find shogi to be the equal of chess if one wants to be challanged for strategy.

The standard way to define the difference in skill that constitutes a "level" is the stronger player being able to win 75% of the time. If A beats B 75% of the time, and B beats C 75% of the time, then A is two levels above C. Chess has about 12 levels of players and Go has over 30.

It is hard to make a fair computation of the number of levels in games that are young and don't have a lot of players. I believe that Arimaa is probably as deep as chess, even though there are only 6.5 levels of players in Arimaa at present. Arimaa is less than five years old, and maybe only a hundred people play regularly at arimaa.com, so there simply hasn't been time to discover all the depth that is there. Intrinsically there may be more to learn about Arimaa than chess, but nobody has learned it yet. When millions of people have learned Arimaa and we have played it for hundreds of years, then we will be able to tell how deep it really is.

If you would like a hint about whether Arimaa appeals to people who like chess and Go, let me mention that the #2-rated Arimaa player in the world chose his handle on arimaa.com to be "chessandgo". I have heard that player say flat out that Arimaa is a better game than chess, but I don't know if he will ever say any game is better than Go.

You might find chuu-shogi interesting. It's played on a 12x12 board with 46 pieces for each player, captured pieces are "dead" so it's much closer to chess, in feel, than shogi is.
http://www.shogi.net/rjhare/chu-shogi/chu-intro.html

Xiang Qi might be up your alley!