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

131–140 of 228 posts

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#131

Post by mtsyh »

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 have. Either that or a miss is failing to capitalize on an opponent’s blunder.

It makes sense to chess players, since we consider missing an opportunity to capitalize on an opponent’s mistake to be distinct from unilaterally making one’s own position worse, even though to lichess those are going to both look like drops in the evaluation score.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#133

Post by joss82 »

smartbear wrote: post #117
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.

(Author of the article) I agree with your counter-point. The finiteness and lock-step are interesting characteristics; I wonder what the set of characteristics are, for when this "rule" is especially applicable. And then we could ask: Is a startup like that? Are some kinds of businesses like that, but some are not? (e.g. a one-person accounting service vs a "change the world" startup?) I do agree that often with star…

It's a bit like trying to know if a geometric series is going to converge to 0 or diverge towards infinity.

If a blunder is a 0, then avoiding blunders is super important.

For example if you are in finance or accounting, commiting fraud makes you lose your license and set your business value to zero.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#134

Post by office_drone »

exceptione wrote: post #63
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.

I am interested, is there some public material about this method?

Commoncog has some blog posts about the process:

https://commoncog.com/putting-amazons-pr-faq-to-practice/

https://commoncog.com/product-development-iterated-taste/

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#135

Post by Cushman »

rileymat2 wrote: post #86
GuB-42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a better analogy would be card counting in Blackjack. To be profitable (if it can be), card counting works with extremely tight margins, like a fraction of a percent per hand. It only turns a profit averaged out over many hands. But if you make a basic strategy blunder, you can lose the statistical benefits of maybe hundreds of perfectly played hands. That's why it may be better to play a simple strategy perfec…

I feel ignorant, I thought with card counting you were still pretty much playing the simple strategy but altering bet sizes as your expectations of winning increased?

Your understanding is correct, more or less[0], but there are two parts to strategy: an inexpert counter is likely to be distracted, and to make errors from perfect play. They’re also likely to lose the count, and make errors in bet sizing. The net of those is worse than a non-counter playing perfectly, whose edge is slightly negative but who still stands a decent chance of making money on a given day.

But note that’s a reason for casinos not to overtly discourage counting; they’ll still happily ban a player who is apparently counting well rather than roll the dice on whether they’re counting “well enough”.

[0] Sibling points out that counters will make specific deviations from “naive” perfect play depending on the count, but that’s to push earnings up a bit on an already positive edge. There’s also the element of camouflage, where a really strong counter might deviate in ways that don’t hurt their earnings but make their play look less “counter-y”.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#136

Post by anamexis »

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 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.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#137

Post by ruined »

Omroth wrote: post #105

"Not strategy, not memorizing opening lines, not practicing your end-game technique, not studying the Great Games of History, not drilling with puzzles to get better at tactics," "In my games, the player who committed more blunders lost 86% of the time." Goodness I wonder what methods one could use to reduce their blunder rate.

it's simple. if i were playing the game, i would make moves that lead to victory, and i wouldn't make moves that lead to defeat. that way, i would always win.

making mistakes seems really stupid and i'm not sure why anyone would do that.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#138

Post by chongli »

Certhas wrote: post #89
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…

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…

That’s position-dependent. In one case you might be in a totally closed position where there’s no obvious way forward and your position gradually deteriorates. In another case you might be in an ultra-sharp, open position where you miss some crazy sacrifice combination that leads to mate-in-10.

The first example is clearly a strategic defeat and the second a tactical defeat. But calling it a “blunder” to miss the sacrifice in such a sharp position feels unfair. You might have been walking a tightrope for a long time to reach that point and then made one little slip any grandmaster could be expected to make.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#139

Post by chongli »

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.

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.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#140

Post by philipov »

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…

It might be tautological, but it also happens to be correct! The Pareto rule applies: A beginner progressing to intermediate might quickly iron out the biggest blunders and by the time they're advanced get 80% there, but mastering that last 20% requires decades of practice.
Post reply on HN