Among other things chess is vastly more complex.
I'm not sure this is necessarily true. While there are certainly an enormous variety of options in chess, those options are limited by the discrete nature of the chessboard and rules of the game. In other words, there are only 64 squares, and you can only move 1 piece at a time (not counting castling). So while this certainly offers a large number of possibilities, pool in general offers *more*. This is because pool the pool table is not set up to be a grid of discrete states, rather it is continuous. In other words, there are an infinite number of locations for each ball, and you can move one, two, or all the balls on one shot. I think from a pure physical standpoint, pool is VASTLY more complex than chess. From a strategic standpoint, I think the perception exists that chess is more strategic than pool. I think, however, that this perception exists because of the genius types of people who excel at chess. I think that by definition since more options exist at any one time in pool, it is the more complex game. In real world terms however, many of these options could be categorized into basic "moves" and "shots"...for example "cross bank the 2 ball and try to bump that 4 away from his pocket". This scenario could unfold in 1000 different slightly different ways, but the "move" is the same.
For a fun experiment, I would like to see a top chess master learn the mechanics of pool and what strategic elements exist. Then let them work with someone like Reyes, Frost, Owen, etc...anyone that can execute shots at a 1st rate pro level...let the chess player decide what to do and the pool player does it. It might be interesting to see how that would work out.
KMRUNOUT
