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Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

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Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#41

Post by JerkyTreatz »

feral wrote: post #13
patio11 wrote: post #2

My little brother, quoting a noted SC personality: when you're ahead, get more ahead. It is probably the most important strategic lesson in the game: if you have a temporary 5 pct material advantage, you can still easily get outplayed if you force a fight. Better to turn that into a 10 pct material advantage, etc, and force a fight only after you've already won. The other game I play a lot of is League of Legends, an…

"Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. [...] Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defea…

Studying pure game theory isn't going to help the SC2 player, at least not in any tangible way, the same with current AI practices.

The point he's trying to make is that truly great (in his view: competitive) games are those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge, so that game "theory" would back-up game "reality" of winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big".

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#42

Post by erikb »

lionhearted wrote: post #27
frankiewarren wrote: post #20

The author stated, "Third, a good competitive game should test a player’s skills and minimize the element of chance or luck. Ideally, the probability of a weak player defeating a good player should be as close to zero as possible." Do you think this is always the case? I'm thinking about texas hold 'em, which has short-term variability but the stronger players win over the long run with a better strategy. Does chance…

The relevant quote here is, "People don't gamble on Chess." A luck element lets players of uneven skill feel engaged. Even better is a great handicapping system like Go has, but that's notoriously hard to design. Chess is a great game at certain skill levels and has a lot of beauty to it, but games with enough of a skill difference aren't really interesting for either player unless the better player is teaching/mento…

I know some people who actually gamble on chess. The thing is, that even with a perfect game (not saying that chess is perfect) you still have the human factors involved. The spirit, the concentration of both players today, the pressure involved when betting money or playing in front of observers. There is still a lot of margin left.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#44

Post by ralfd »

seri wrote: post #18

Day9 hosted an event called The After Hours Gaming League in which eight tech companies will compete each other for charity. The event has just finished its first season with team Microsoft crushing everyone else. Zynga is the runner up and Google claimed third place. Games: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ahgl Homepage: http://afterhoursgaming.tv/ There are a number of interesting game theory articles on…

I was really impressed how Microsoft steamrolled everyone!

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#45

Post by ralfd »

jaredmck wrote: post #21

This marginal advantage strategy is also well demonstrated in professional tennis. When you are in control of the rally, going for a shot which maintains your offensive position, with the potential to slightly extend your lead within the rally, is best. Often the defensive player will go for a huge winner if they are getting tired or are so out of position as to be unable to recover by hitting several good marginal d…

Tennis, yes! And I would guess also Basketball and other games with small but many incremental scoring.

I read some time an article in which was argued, that this is a fundamental difference in Soccer compared to other team sports. As there is often only 1-2 goals in Soccer a Toss-up between a top team and an underdog is more likely. It is even often the case that a team is playing dominating but they lose anyhow, because the weaker team is getting lucky and stumples the ball in the goal. This keeps the sport fresh and interesting and is seen by fans as a virtue. The randomness is then cancelled out over the season and marginal advantage is important in competition for the league championship.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#47

Post by algorias »

endtime wrote: post #31
jtchang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends when the kill is. A single worker from your initial 6? Big problem.

You can't even get a scout worker to your opponent's base before they're up to 9-10 workers or more on most maps. Anyway, killing one worker of 6 is 17% of someone's economy, not 1%.

Killing a worker early is subject to compound interest, so that 17% (or 10% more realistically) of an early worker kill is going to grow exponentially all game long.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#48

Post by feral »

ido wrote: post #34
feral wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. [...] Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defea…

If there's a lesson here, its that strategy gamers might benefit from doing some reading. You have to play sc2 or similar games for years before that kind of advice becomes applicable (since there is so much basic skill to pick up before the game becomes that strategic), and by the time you know the game well enough to find the correct analogy to something written in The Art of War you've probably already discovered…

>You have to play sc2 or similar games for years before that kind of advice becomes applicable (since there is so much basic skill to pick up before the game becomes that strategic), and by the time you know the game well enough to find the correct analogy to something written in The Art of War you've probably already discovered it yourself.

You seem to be saying that by the time they are playing at a level where general strategic advice becomes applicable, they'll already have learned it. This is a little circular.

Also, I think it probably takes a couple of months, before you get to the strategic level, not years, but that's just an opinion.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#49

Post by feral »

JerkyTreatz wrote: post #41
feral wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. [...] Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defea…

Studying pure game theory isn't going to help the SC2 player, at least not in any tangible way, the same with current AI practices. The point he's trying to make is that truly great (in his view: competitive) games are those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge, so that game "theory" would back-up game "reality" of winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winnin…

It'd definitely help people wanting to write articles analyzing starcraft. There's definitely things the author doesn't get, that'd seem obvious if he'd read this stuff.

Anyway, I think most people study pure game theory, not because its directly applicable; they study it because there are some surprising results from it, that inform their strategic thinking - not because they apply it to evaluate their specific strategic situation.

>The point he's trying to make is that truly great (in his view: competitive) games are those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge, so that game "theory" would back-up game "reality" of winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big".

I'm not sure that's the point he's making. But anyway, I'm not sure its a valid point. For example, Chess is a game where the most advanced AI algorithms have a huge competitive edge, surely its a truely great, competitive, game?

It is desirable property in a game, that there is no obvious strongly dominant pure strategy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_dominance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_(game_theory)#Pure_and...

"winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big"" doesn't at all follow from: "those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge".

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