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How to play with people who are better than you

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Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#31

Post by mjfl »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #14
dragontamer wrote: post #4

Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing. Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty…

> If you want to get better, train up. This doesn't mesh with why lots of people play things. It's play. It might just be a nice way to pass the time. I would rather play basketball against someone my level than Steph Curry playing all out. I'm not playing to win or even to get better (getting better is fun, but isn't the point). I just want to have fun. For many kinds of play, if you have to train for it, you may as…

If you're just playing to pass the time, why does it matter if you lose to Steph Curry or not?

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#32

Post by monsieurbanana »

dspillett wrote: post #25
jstummbillig wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My inability to defeat the greatest players of a subject does NOT make the game less appealing Yes, it does. To them. Anyone who is driven to get better at a game will be bored with playing with or against clearly worse players very quickly.

If they are to snooty to play with those with less experience/skill to help them learn the game, and to help the joy of their game spread, then that is their problem. Let them stew in the boredom of only ever playing against the few they consider worthy while the rest of us have a good time!

Has this whole thread forgotten about the concept of moderation?

Most people don't like to play only against much weaker players, nor only against much stronger players.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#33

Post by tapland »

mjfl wrote: post #31
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to get better, train up. This doesn't mesh with why lots of people play things. It's play. It might just be a nice way to pass the time. I would rather play basketball against someone my level than Steph Curry playing all out. I'm not playing to win or even to get better (getting better is fun, but isn't the point). I just want to have fun. For many kinds of play, if you have to train for it, you may as…

If you're just playing to pass the time, why does it matter if you lose to Steph Curry or not?

Because there is no excitement or any possibility of winning motivating you to even pretent do put effort in

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#34

Post by danielbarla »

ycombinete wrote: post #18
fnord123 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I disagree. I will always lose to Magnus Carlsen in Chess. I will always lose to my friends in (insert any FPS game here, I'm bad at all of them). I will always lose to Mew2King in Super Smash Bros: Melee. That's one data point. But I'm sure valve or blizzard or any company with an online gaming community has stats on retention and knows who people want to play with in aggregate. And generally when you play online y…

Yeah, which game of skill is also important. As I commented below, more modular games like squash, where you can get a point here and there, can be played like this. A 600 ELO point difference in chess basically means you will never win, and it becomes futile, and crushing.

It's only futile if your main / only goal is to win. I tend to view playing much stronger opponents as an opportunity to learn (especially if they are taking the time to explain things). In that sense, it's a massive "win". Alternatively, you can always redefine a "win", e.g. as getting a draw out of a 400 ELO higher opponent. It's realistic and shows that you are progressing in a positive direction.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#35

Post by shultays »

(disclaimer I am not a good chess player)

In high school I was playing chess with someone better than me and my plan was to trade equal pieces as much as possible because I am bound to make worse/stupid mistakes than more he does and because of that I wanted to move end game as fast as possible.

It actually worked and it ended in tie! I still remember the end game, it was amazing

http://prntscr.com/q5z36e (it was roughly like this, can't remember exact positions)

I was white, I think the last move was I moved my pawn and declared tie

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#36

Post by mjfl »

tapland wrote: post #33
mjfl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're just playing to pass the time, why does it matter if you lose to Steph Curry or not?

Because there is no excitement or any possibility of winning motivating you to even pretent do put effort in

Doesn't seem like you are playing to pass the time, in that case. Seems like you are playing to win. The difference is in the former case the play is the reward in itself and in the latter case you need to feel victory over someone. Seems crypto-competitive and kind of weird for that reason.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#37

Post by peter422 »

dragontamer wrote: post #4

Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing. Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty…

Chess is a particularly poor example for your point because piece odds (the better player starting without a piece... escalating from pawn to queen) is a really good handicap system that not only makes the games more interesting but also gives each player more useful training. The better player how to play when behind and the worse player how to try to win with a material advantage.

And you probably aren’t learning valuable lessons just losing to a much better player over and over again straight up. They won’t be the type of positions you’d get against players of your skill level. A much better player is likely getting decisive advantages out of the opening or early middle game, whereas especially at lower levels the middle game and endgame are much more important.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#38

Post by ccchiji »

peter422 wrote: post #37
dragontamer wrote: post #4

Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing. Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty…

Chess is a particularly poor example for your point because piece odds (the better player starting without a piece... escalating from pawn to queen) is a really good handicap system that not only makes the games more interesting but also gives each player more useful training. The better player how to play when behind and the worse player how to try to win with a material advantage. And you probably aren’t learning v…

Upvote

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#39

Post by arrrg »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #13
dorkwood wrote: post #3

I never liked the idea of explicitly changing the rules in order to make a game more fair for new players. If you become accustomed to changing the rules whenever you find yourself outmatched, and then find yourself in a situation where the rules can't be changed for whatever reason, then you're not going to enjoy yourself. It's much more enjoyable for everyone, in my opinion, to play by the same rules as the group,…

Many boards games attempt to make things fun even if you’re losing. One of the best games for this is Concordia, where you don’t count up the points until the end. You always feel that you have a chance. Once you get fairly good however, you can scan the board state and do some rough guesstimating to see who is in the lead. Other games can be quite brutal. You make one wrong move and you know you’re in for 2.5 hrs of…

I’m not sure what to think about this obfuscation tactic.

Lost Cities is a simple two-player card game where you have to take risks in laying out your cards with incomplete information.

In the end the points are tallied up. The calculation is somewhat complicated (or at least the number of points you will get are not immediately obvious at a glance), to the point where my partner and me both frequently thought we had clearly lost, but after tallying up the points it turns out we had won (or were at least much closer to winning than we thought).

I like the game but that somehow feels, well, at least weird. Especially since I first played this game on my phone. There is this really lovely implementation of it as an app that’s a real joy to play and feels very tactile and pleasant to use, much like the physical game. But one important difference is that the points are tallied up and shown for both you and your opponent as you play.

That to me makes the play at least feel more involved and more calculating. It feels quite different and I think I like it better but maybe that has also something to do with the game being very quick and it also tends to be well balanced. If I had to suffer through long stretches of time knowing I will lose … well that might be different.

Link to the board game: http://riograndegames.com/games.html?id=126 Link to the app: https://lostcitiesapp.com

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