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Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

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Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#171

Post by zoogeny »

This is mostly tangential to the article contents, but I've been watching interviews and talks by Benoit Mandelbrot [1] recently. I was a little surprised to find his work outside of fractals to be extremely interesting. He characterizes his own work as being on the general concept of "roughness".

The reason I bring it up in context of this article for blundering, is that he studies the chaotic movement of stock markets from the abstract perspective of "roughness". That is, he is interested in categorizing patterns that are in some kind of grey zone between smooth and completely chaotic.

One of the features I recall him mentioning in one of his introductions was related to "black swan" type events in markets. He suggests that only a few stock movements over time account for the majority of loss/gain. This is a feature he was interested in exploring and recreating using mathematical models and it lead him to investigate sampling from stochastic distributions that are not Gaussian.

This view is forcing me to evaluate some of this startup/business advice in a new light. This article seems to assume that both in chess and business that "blunders" are distributed in a normal way (probably not the correct mathematical term but I hope it communicates what I mean). But in reality, some blunders are tiny and some are massive.

Consider, you can avoid 99 out of 100 blunders but if the 1 blunder you make is that black swan blunder then you are dead. Conversely, you can make 99 out of 100 blunders but if you avoid that 1 black swan blunder then you can survive and even thrive. Of course, avoiding all blunders just happens to ensure that you also miss the catastrophic ones.

I haven't fully digested this idea but I think it is the basis for some profound advancement in our understanding. The problem is we can't really tell at any given moment which events are the ones that will end up being the most impactful, that seems to only come in hindsight. But even just realizing that there is an unequal distribution to the contribution of events over time feels pretty important to me.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoit_Mandelbrot

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#172

Post by ilaksh »

philbo wrote: post #23

It seems to me that the main difference between chess and startups is that in chess you only have one opponent. The more opponents you have, the more likelihood that not blundering on its own is not sufficient.

I think that there are at least 10 main differences between chess (or other sports) and startups.

It's a very weak analogy.

He does have a few good points though if you disregard that.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#173

Post by [deleted] »

janalsncm wrote: post #57

> the player who committed more blunders lost 86% of the time In some sense this is almost tautological. While finding an exact definition for a chess blunder isn't straightforward, here is one example from the Lichess UI: https://github.com/lichess-org/lila/blob/b527746b179cdde6438... Basically, if you make a move which decreases your winning probability more than 14% over the best move, that's a blunder. But winnin…

[deleted]

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#174

Post by anamexis »

Retric wrote: post #151
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.

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…

I'm talking about daily/correspondence games.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#175

Post by bluedino »

People always tell me they wish they were good at cooking.

The biggest thing is don't mess up.

Don't burn anything, don't undercook it, don't overseason, don't underseason. Even if it's just "okay", if you can avoid ruining food, consistently, people will start to refer to you as a 'good cook'.

Or in another way, just don't be a bad cook and you'll be a good one.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#176

Post by jitl »

bluedino wrote: post #175

People always tell me they wish they were good at cooking. The biggest thing is don't mess up. Don't burn anything, don't undercook it, don't overseason, don't underseason. Even if it's just "okay", if you can avoid ruining food, consistently, people will start to refer to you as a 'good cook'. Or in another way, just don't be a bad cook and you'll be a good one.

A lot of this is recipe selection too! If you are a beginner, and have people coming over, don't pick a new recipe or a complicated old recipe. Do something easy, especially if you're doubling to feed more mouths.

corollary: Thanksgiving is a day for cooking standards, not innovating (unless you've practiced)

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#177

Post by smatija »

mtsyh wrote: post #131
janalsncm wrote: post #57

> the player who committed more blunders lost 86% of the time In some sense this is almost tautological. While finding an exact definition for a chess blunder isn't straightforward, here is one example from the Lichess UI: https://github.com/lichess-org/lila/blob/b527746b179cdde6438... Basically, if you make a move which decreases your winning probability more than 14% over the best move, that's a blunder. But winnin…

Chess.com is more sophisticated than this in the treatment of blunders. They are divided into “misses” and “blunders”. In my experience, it appears that the difference between the two is that a “miss” is something the computer evaluates as unreasonable or difficult for a human to find. If you had found it, it would have been deemed a “brilliant” move, which is another analysis move type that chess.com has doesn’t hav…

Chess.com isn't really more sophisticated than lichess - it's only trying to appear so.

It's definition of blunder etc is still based only on engine evaluation. For example it marks as briliant all sound sacrifices, even the most routine ones. This is good marketing, but I doubt it's good analysis.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#178

Post by koonsolo »

blowski wrote: post #85
koonsolo wrote: post #56

Once he started talking about chess, I knew it was going to be a limited view on things. There are 2 kinds of games: those that punish mistakes very badly, and those that reward exploited opportunities very richly. I was never good at games like chess because of this exact same reason: I don't cover all my bases and lose from a stupid oversight. However, I'm pretty good at poker, because I know how to exploit an oppo…

I don’t understand your distinction between types of games. In Chess, your stupid mistake creates an opportunity your opponent can exploit. The failure to exploit an opportunity is itself a mistake. I guess in Poker there is an element of luck of the deal - is that the kind of opportunity you’re talking about?

The distinction is how much a mistake gets punished. In chess, a tiny oversight might lose you the game ("Oops I didn't saw you could take my queen").

In poker, a huge mistake like "whoops I dropped my cards accidently open on the table" is "let's not bet this round" as if nothing happened.

Let me give you some real life examples so you can spot the difference.

Security always falls into the "don't make any mistakes" category. A small oversight might jeopardise your entire system. Some back door was open and nobody realised it. Whoops!

In startups, like I mentioned, when you solve a critical problem for customers, your UX can be terrible, your production can be inefficient, your product can be full of bugs. If your product solves a critical problem, it's still a big win for your customer, even though all the rest is terrible. This is exploiting an opportunity.

In sports, take basketball for example, the game is much more forgiving with mistakes compared to something like gymnastics. In basketball, a missed shot or a turnover isn't the end of the world; you have multiple opportunities to recover and score points throughout the game. However, in gymnastics, a slight misstep or a fall during a routine can severely impact your overall score, leaving little room for recovery.

You could also look at investments for example. In stock trading, especially day trading, a single mistake can lead to significant financial loss, especially if leverage is involved. It's a game where covering all bases and being cautious of every move is critical. On the other hand, venture capital operates more on the principle of exploiting opportunities. Venture capitalists invest in several startups knowing well that most will fail, but a single successful investment can cover for all losses and bring substantial profits.

In the end, knowing which game you're playing is essential. I see plenty of people trying to cover all bases when in reality it's the opportunity that really matters. If your personality is one more than the other, you can take a profession that leans into your strength.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#179

Post by phone8675309 »

jitl wrote: post #176
bluedino wrote: post #175

People always tell me they wish they were good at cooking. The biggest thing is don't mess up. Don't burn anything, don't undercook it, don't overseason, don't underseason. Even if it's just "okay", if you can avoid ruining food, consistently, people will start to refer to you as a 'good cook'. Or in another way, just don't be a bad cook and you'll be a good one.

A lot of this is recipe selection too! If you are a beginner, and have people coming over, don't pick a new recipe or a complicated old recipe. Do something easy, especially if you're doubling to feed more mouths. corollary: Thanksgiving is a day for cooking standards, not innovating (unless you've practiced)

I've never seen anyone more stressed in the kitchen than my partner trying to debone and roll a turkey for Thanksgiving as opposed to doing it the standard way in the oven.

They went to culinary school, but this was a production for family and was uniquely stressful for them. It turned out fantastic but they were wrecked for the rest of that long weekend.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#180

Post by tech_ken »

sourcepluck wrote: post #168

There are some major misunderstandings about chess amongst the general public. "Wanting to not blunder" and "not blundering" are two very different things. I remember an in-person rapid tournament, 12m with a 3s increment, I was rated ~1600, playing a lot at the time, reading books, etc. In the first round got matched against the highest rated player there (which is normal, someone has to play them in the first round…

> 12-year-olds will wipe the floor with you

Was chatting with a guy who used to play pick up games at the Marshall and I remember him talking about how humbling it was to get your head kicked in by like a 7 year old. I think this is one of the coolest things about chess: in most other competitions age is a huge predictor of the outcome (I'd crush a 7 year old in basketball), but in chess it can be almost harder to face a young opponent because their learning rate is so ferocious and they're young enough that pride often isn't a distractor. One of my ongoing struggles in getting my Elo higher is to try and keep the childlike playfulness front-and-center. As you say in your anecdote: it's all about playing simple moves and not getting tilted. Let the super-GMs calculate 15-move lines.

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