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Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

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Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#71

Post by vaylian »

joss82 wrote: post #70

This only works where the number of moves is finite, and you can only iterate in lockstep with your opponent: tennis and chess are good examples. If you are a startup, you don't have to wait for your competitors to play before making a move, you can (and must, to survive) make as many moves as you possibly can, to get ahead. A blunder is not as bad as not making enough great moves.

> you can (and must, to survive) make as many moves as you possibly can, to get ahead.

The tricky part is not getting ahead in the wrong direction, because that could be a blunder if the strategy behind that move is not well thought through.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#72

Post by ZephyrBlu »

salamo wrote: post #52
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #44

A better way to read this is "80% of a not losing strategy". The author agrees with this but buries the lede at the very end of the piece: "Is this a fail-safe path? Of course not. Even in chess. The rest of the game does matter." I also think his framing is somewhat misleading, since the default mindset (Despite his hedging) is that you will win (Or have higher chances) if you don't blunder. The problem is that winn…

> The problem is that winning in startups is often a tail event, which means reducing blunders doesn't have much impact on the overall probability. Maybe you could compare it to playing chess against a much higher rated player. In that sense, minimizing your weaknesses is still useful. And looking at the "blunders" the author lists we can definitely say that making these errors is worse than not making them. One plac…

Yes I know it's useful. The last line of my comment said that: "Reducing blunders is obviously good in any situation, but is it the dealbreaker for startups? It always depends on the context".

"is it useful?" usually isn't a very interesting question, because a lot of things are obviously useful and yet don't have much of an impact on results.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#73

Post by anon012012 »

StefanBatory wrote: post #34
ikekkdcjkfke wrote: post #12

So it's not "ok to fail" this week?

Failure was never alright despite what people claim.

They say "you need to fail to succeed". The key thing is that it is not enough to fail, you also have to reflect on why you failed, and this is the reflection which has you progress.

It is not the failure itself which is progress, it is the act of failing, then feeling BAD, and then thinking about how not to feel BAD anymore. Failure without feedback is pointless failure. (This is the same idea than deliberate practice.)

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#74

Post by seabass-labrax »

harry8 wrote: post #58
chillfox wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"These are surely not true when you're at a high level" I don't know what you mean by high level, but I suspect that avoiding mistakes continues to be very important regardless of level in most things. I play Marvel Snap in the top 1000 and at that level most of the games comes down to whoever makes a mistake first loses.

French Open tennis. Seems like the winners, (eg Rafa Nadal who has one of the greatest sporting records in any sport, anywhere there), consistently hit ground strokes from the baseline, back over the net and deep enough in play. From that point the opponent self-destructs. Ok differs from wimbeldon where guys play Hamlet while playing in the final (Kyrios, Becker, McEnroe, etc. etc.) and can win doing it with outrage…

I don't follow tennis closely enough to understand the difference. What makes the eventual winners at Wimbledon play more aggressively than at the French Open? Is it due to the environment (clay or grass perhaps) or some sort of cultural thing?

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#75

Post by lioeters »

ffsm8 wrote: post #61
otterley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve learned at Amazon that writing about what you want to build, and why, and why not do something else - in a way that others can clearly comprehend, and before ever touching a line of code - helps you think even more clearly.

It really doesn't, unless you've already implemented a variation of the thing before. There is a time for reflection and planning/thinking about a given software problem, but you're mostly wasting time doing so in-depth before you've done/looked through a rudimentary implementation. Your planned architecture will be worse then the one from the person that interated several times while introspecting the resulting code…

> initial implementation is only there to learn the domain

I've been trying to do a kind of documentation-driven development, where I write a fairly detailed README file before I write a single line of code. It hasn't gone as smoothly as I imagined, I think it takes practice to get more effective - similar to test-driven dev. And it made me realize my usual approach is "to think by coding", and to explore the problem space with a rough draft of a program.

It must be a common approach, as I've heard people say "Throw away the first draft." Not only in programming but about writing in general. Ah, there's even a term for it:

Throwaway prototyping - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_prototyping#Throwaway...

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#76

Post by marginalia_nu »

CharlesW wrote: post #9
titusjohnson wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blunders are things you _could_ or _should_ have avoided, had you only taken a moment to pause and think.

By "blunders", the author includes both those which can be prevented (see section "Preventable blunders") and those which can't. This is one of the reasons this article is silly. Next in the series is, "Avoid accidents: 80% of being a good driver."

Driving accidents are largely avoidable though.

If you avoid the wheel while tired or with alcohol in your system, you'll slash a big part of the risk. Avoid conversations in the car, on the phone or with your passenger(s), that's even more risk reduced. Keep your tires in good shape, your windshield clean, that's even better. Finally, if if you practice defensive driving, situational awareness, more still accidents can be avoided.

Nothing will of course mitigate all accidents, but there are definitely things that make you more or less accident prone in traffic.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#77

Post by smatija »

salamo wrote: post #69
smatija wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These evaluation-centric definitions of blunder are a bit awkward though. Traditionally blunders were defined in more player-centric way: player blundered, when he made a mistake obvious enough, that a player of his strength is very unlikely to make. So what is a blunder for a strong player may merely be a mistake for a weaker player. Problem with evaluation-centric definition is that not all moves that worsen positi…

Chess.com is also definitely using an evaluation-centric definition to label moves as blunders. The issue is that this definition is also some function of the change in winning probability. > So what is a blunder for a strong player may merely be a mistake for a weaker player. Statistically this intuition appears to be correct. Your winning probability is still more than 25% when down a queen against an 800 rated pla…

I agree - all attempts at automatic classification of blunder have same problem. This is why analysing games without engine still matters and is going to matter for foreseable future.

Don't forget also impact of time control - shorter games lead to more mutual mistakes. While in 90+30 first big blunder should decide the game, in blitz it's just the beginning.

Amusing example is Chessbrah speedruning to 2000, while hanging queen in every game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/593176969

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#79

Post by worddepress »

rightbyte wrote: post #4

This effect is why I am like 10 times as effective working 1/10 as much as in my younger years in my career. You can only afford to work fast when not in a hurry. If I also take credit for work I've not done I am probably a 1000x dev. Multi year projects shut down in under a hour before they became any trouble.

But I am paid by the hour. I make more money if we do the multi year project :-). That big fancy project needs someone to lead it, eh :-). Now I am up a level on the old CV.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#80

Post by darkerside »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #44

A better way to read this is "80% of a not losing strategy". The author agrees with this but buries the lede at the very end of the piece: "Is this a fail-safe path? Of course not. Even in chess. The rest of the game does matter." I also think his framing is somewhat misleading, since the default mindset (Despite his hedging) is that you will win (Or have higher chances) if you don't blunder. The problem is that winn…

Have to agree with this sentiment, and I'm surprised it's not getting more traction. If startups are like chess, they are like very low level chess because the game was just invented. Nobody knows what a blunder is yet, many will go undetected, and worrying about playing perfect chess will probably outrun your runway.
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