I find it gravely dull. If it were a genuine competition between rationalists predicting one another’s future moves, it might hold some interest, but the rules are ancient enough that any competent player has merely learned the best plays of prior experts for a variety of board states. The game thus devolves into a droll memorization contest, with intellectual prowess playing second fiddle.

Such a fate inevitably befalls any game with simple rules and sufficient popularity. It becomes the subject of rigorous research, and the original game is lost underneath layers of fixed preplanned strategies culled from people much more clever than the player.

Much more interesting are games that manage to remain as psychological contests—or become moreso—even when all players involved know how to play perfectly. The prisoner’s dilemma is a particularly simple example.