Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

longform.asmartbear.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 228 posts

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#151

Post by Retric »

anamexis wrote: post #136
Retric wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an issue of how the games are evaluated. At most skill levels a human being slowly outplayed is trading blunders from a computer’s perspective. For a 1400 a game where an 800 crushed a 500 is most likely a comedy of errors. For a GM that 1400 crushing a 1100 will similarly be filled with missed opportunities. And for a top chess engine on significant depth, most games are practically a slapstick comedy because t…

I don't think that's true. Speaking as someone sub-1000 rated who plays lots of other people in the same region, the computer evals don't typically show a series of blunders. 1 or 2 blunders per game is common, but blunder-less games are also not uncommon. Just lots and lots of suboptimal but not terrible moves.

If you’re rated 800 online and making 1-2 blunders per game playing blitz, that seems low and it still adds up to 2-4 in a given game.

If you mean longer time controls then that’s definitely helping, but most games are 5 minutes or less simply because players are going to be able to fit far more such games per day. Similarly the average rating is quite low simply because everyone starts terrible and most people quit relatively quickly.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#152

Post by anamexis »

chongli wrote: post #139
anamexis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. Speaking as someone sub-1000 rated who plays lots of other people in the same region, the computer evals don't typically show a series of blunders. 1 or 2 blunders per game is common, but blunder-less games are also not uncommon. Just lots and lots of suboptimal but not terrible moves.

They may be referring to sub-1000 online rated. An 800 FIDE rated player is going to wipe the floor with an 800 chess.com rated player.

If anything that reinforces my point that low-rated players aren't losing in a series of constant blunders.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#153

Post by chongli »

anamexis wrote: post #152
chongli wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be referring to sub-1000 online rated. An 800 FIDE rated player is going to wipe the floor with an 800 chess.com rated player.

If anything that reinforces my point that low-rated players aren't losing in a series of constant blunders.

If you’re 800 FIDE rated over the board you’re not going to be 800 online. You’ll be way above that. I haven’t played in years but I was beating 1200 rated players online as a total beginner. The ratings are not comparable.

A sub-1000 online rated player is frankly a very poor, total beginner at chess, not an enthusiastic club player.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#154

Post by anamexis »

chongli wrote: post #153
anamexis wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything that reinforces my point that low-rated players aren't losing in a series of constant blunders.

If you’re 800 FIDE rated over the board you’re not going to be 800 online. You’ll be way above that. I haven’t played in years but I was beating 1200 rated players online as a total beginner. The ratings are not comparable. A sub-1000 online rated player is frankly a very poor, total beginner at chess, not an enthusiastic club player.

No argument there, but that has nothing to do with my point that novices at chess aren't just playing constant blunders when playing each other.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#155

Post by petsfed »

talldatethrow wrote: post #150

Totally unrelated side note, but I was in car sales for almost a decade and was better than top 1% nationwide basically since the first year. Averaging 34 cars a month when national average is 11. People always asked for advice and in general my advice was "don't shoot yourself in the foot". Actual particular style or methods aren't that important because whatever style you have will work on some and not on others, s…

Turns out "get the hell out of the way" is very good baseline advice for a lot of situations.

Want to make a sale? Get a customer in the room with a good product, then get the hell out of the way.

Want your team of engineers to build incredible things? Hire good people, then get the hell out of the way.

Its not perfect, it hinges a lot on starting from a good place, but if you're in a situation where everybody in the room wants essentially the same thing (for the project to succeed, for the customer to drive away with a new car, etc), the best thing you can do is simply not interfere with the process that arises organically.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#156

Post by jprete »

rKarpinski wrote: post #149
upwardbound wrote: post #146

> I computed a simple “error score” that includes mistakes while giving blunders more weight: [number of mistakes] × 2*[number of blunders] This doesn't give blunders more weight.. Multiplication is commutative and associative, so the author's formula is also the same as this one: 2*[number of mistakes] × [number of blunders] To give more weight to blunders, you could use an exponent, which is a common trick in baseb…

Think the star represents exponent, otherwise they are using two different symbols for multiplication.

It's possible, but that formula is (after a log2 transformation) equivalent in comparison power to log2(mistakes) + blunders. This is almost reducing the mistake term to a tiebreaker, because mistakes and blunders are on the same scale (a proportion of the number of actions taken in a game).

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#157

Post by vundercind »

fernandopj wrote: post #124
skeeter2020 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what professional poker players do, and if the goal is winning it works. It also changes what was originally a pleasurable social activity into a grinding job, which I don't want for things that I currently find fun, like ping pong.

Exactly. This is the reason at one point I stopped being invited to casual poker games with friends of friends. I was amateur level compared to professionals, but just because I don't make blunders, any game session 4 hours long were enough for me to systematically get most if not all of everyone else's money and ruin their fun.

This kind of play is boring in a friendly setting because you’re folding so damn often. That bothers me more than how often someone’s winning (and is why my friend group doesn’t play anymore—the guy most-interested in organizing games plays “correctly”, and it’s boring, so nobody wants to do it)

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#158

Post by rKarpinski »

jprete wrote: post #156
rKarpinski wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think the star represents exponent, otherwise they are using two different symbols for multiplication.

It's possible, but that formula is (after a log2 transformation) equivalent in comparison power to log2(mistakes) + blunders. This is almost reducing the mistake term to a tiebreaker, because mistakes and blunders are on the same scale (a proportion of the number of actions taken in a game).

> This is almost reducing the mistake term to a tiebreaker

Isn't that exactly what it's supposed to be?

>> However, in 40% of the games both players had an equal number of blunders. So I also included “mistakes”—the next-worst kind of error.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#159

Post by eggbrain »

I struggle with how I'm supposed to grok this advice, as it feels like a tautology.

E.g. with his chess example, I can't see how blundering isn't just a result of a lack of the things he mentions -- practicing technique, drilling puzzles, etc. How can we as amateurs know _not_ to make blunders without knowing _why_ it was a blunder, which usually involves being properly skilled to identify the blunder ahead of time in some fashion?

The main caveats I can think of are ego/recklessness/apathy/emotion, which revolve around not caring about making a blunder, along with distraction/hastiness, which revolve around not having the appropriate mental energy to not make a blunder.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#160

Post by a_t48 »

eggbrain wrote: post #159

I struggle with how I'm supposed to grok this advice, as it feels like a tautology. E.g. with his chess example, I can't see how blundering isn't just a result of a lack of the things he mentions -- practicing technique, drilling puzzles, etc. How can we as amateurs know _not_ to make blunders without knowing _why_ it was a blunder, which usually involves being properly skilled to identify the blunder ahead of time i…

Many many chess blunders are as simple as “I moved a piece where it can be immediately taken”.
Post reply on HN