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Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

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Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#201

Post by Bognar »

sitkack wrote: post #125
SenHeng wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good example would be Elizabeth Swaney[0] who somehow found her way into the 2018 Winter Olympics simply by showing up at qualifying. In order to qualify for the Olympics, athletes needed to place in the top 30 at either a FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup event or FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships, and score a minimum of 50.00 FIS points.[9] Swaney achieved this by attending competitions with fewer than thirty parti…

This has been my analysis of high level competition as a whole. It isn't about who is the best, as in peak performance. It is about consistently making the least amount of mistakes. You can break records, or you can out de-mistake the competition.

There's a more unfortunate interpretation, which is that whoever can afford the travel and time to not be at work is more likely to qualify. I know a fencer who was in his mid 20s consistently placing top 3 in every tournament he went to and was Olympics material (based on who he was competing with and which of them did go to the Olympics). However, he didn't make the cut because the points system rewarded presence at more tournaments higher than placement and he had a job to keep showing up at.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#202

Post by harry8 »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #144
I_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grass is faster, meaning for any given shot over the net you have less time to respond. This encourages attacking behaviour. Clay is slower, meaning even off fast, angled, difficult-to-reach shots the ball bounces higher and slower, meaning you have time to get to it, thus prolonging rallies and points. But beyond that, it's not just that players choose to play more aggressive on grass - a given shot is more aggressi…

Fascinating! Thanks for the explanation.

Note Rafa has also won wimbeldon on grass, against Federer at his unbelievable peak (in the midst of winning it 8 times), in 5 sets, in the final, finishing in the dark. And won again 2 years later to put those trophies with his 14 French Open titles.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#203

Post by fernandopj »

vundercind wrote: post #157
fernandopj wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Anecdotally of course, but that was not my case at all (and I imagine for a lot of people). Counter-intuitively I guess, but I could see a lot more flops just because I would have a) a lot of correct readings by turn and b) easily exploit obviously bad EV plays by others, regardless if I won at showdown.

Folding a lot makes you a boring player, but getting involved a lot and "somehow" getting a lot of chips eventually makes you _dangerous_ at these friendly gathering and that's what gets you unwelcome (at play - I'm still friend with these people I'm talking about).

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#204

Post by Certhas »

Retric wrote: post #103
Certhas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not tautological, though. Your position can gradually deteriorate until it is not salvageable anymore. In that situation we say that the opponent outplayed you. The fact that the switches in probability occur suddenly is highly relevant. One reason for this could be, that you are able to avoid this type of mistake 90% of the time. So during 9 out of ten moves, nothing changes. Then it does. So in this model, avo…

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 would go with the definition of a blunder as a move that you instantly recognize as wrong once you see the response. So the definition is relative to your own skill level.

It's at least partly a property of the game itself. If the game is tossing a coin, first to 100 heads wins, then the win probability will not take major swings. If you have a game where the person in a worse position has many opportunities to recover, win probability does not swing so much.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#205

Post by smatija »

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.

Minimum FIDE rating is 1400, so you really cannot be 800 FIDE. Also the gap between online and FIDE ratings is closer than people think.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#206

Post by Doxin »

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)

also: A lot of recipes are absolutely terrible. That included internet recipes but also recipes by renowned chefs and whatnot. There seems to be some sort of evolutionary pressure for over complicating recipes out the wazoo.

E.g. when trying to find a recipe for a vegetable lasagna, and skipping all the incomplete recipes, you end up with a recipe that involves 10 ingredients, involves a pan, a couple of bowls, an oven dish, quite some prep-work, and an oven.

The lasagna recipe I prefer has 6 ingredients, uses an oven dish, an oven, and no prep work. If you don't count the time it spends in the oven it's maybe 10 minutes of work. It's tasty to the point where the first time I made it I overate to the point of having a stomach ache for hours afterwards.

Guess which recipe is better for someone new-ish to cooking?

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#207

Post by yurishimo »

Doxin wrote: post #206
jitl wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

also: A lot of recipes are absolutely terrible. That included internet recipes but also recipes by renowned chefs and whatnot. There seems to be some sort of evolutionary pressure for over complicating recipes out the wazoo. E.g. when trying to find a recipe for a vegetable lasagna, and skipping all the incomplete recipes, you end up with a recipe that involves 10 ingredients, involves a pan, a couple of bowls, an ov…

Can you share your recipe? I would be interested in in one that doesn't require any prep. I assume you have to cut _something_ though?

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#208

Post by xetsilon »

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #15

Also luck is probably a much larger factor than most people realize. It's not just bad luck leading to failure, but luck leading to customers/revenue. As an example, if no one is competing with you, it doesn't matter too much how good you are.

I couldn't disagree more.

The idea that we are particles suspended in fluid at the whim of Brownian motion is already an idea that has been taken to ridiculous extremes.

Everyone already believes what you are saying to a ridiculous degree.

Like anything involving strategy someone always says "well we really underestimate that this is all just a stochastic procress"

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#209

Post by Retric »

anamexis wrote: post #200
Retric wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have better data, or are you just being an asshole? Last I checked, 55% of games on chess.com are 5 minutes or less if that’s what you’re asking. But at this point I’m just done with this conversation. Also, average account ELO was ~800 not sure if that’s active or just not banned.

I meant number of blunders per game at low ELOs. I stand by my estimation that even at 800, even a 5 minute game would have a median blunder count of 1 or 2. Which is hardly a constant stream of blunders, which is what I was trying to point out.

I looked at a sampling and it was more like 5-6 per game it’s high variance some where much better or worse. But I didn’t find any summary statistics.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#210

Post by Retric »

smatija wrote: post #205
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.

Minimum FIDE rating is 1400, so you really cannot be 800 FIDE. Also the gap between online and FIDE ratings is closer than people think.

That’s not correct, as of 2022:

They only publish numbers above 1000, but they still come up with a number before deciding to not publish it. https://www.fide.com/docs/regulations/FIDE%20Rating%20Regula...

Not all clubs follow those rules exactly, but you still need to track sub 1000 to know when people cross it.

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