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Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

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Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#161

Post by petsfed »

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.

I disagree categorically with this.

In baseball, the team that commits the most unforced errors tends to lose the game, but the team that scores the most runs always wins.

Usain Bolt doesn't have 8 gold medals and 3 world records because he has perfect form (I just learned that he has scoliosis, leading to "imperfect" form, whether that made him faster or slower than he would otherwise be is apparently a subject of some debate), but because he's fast. It is frequently the case that the best at something defines "perfect" form. And anyway, Bolt doesn't run marathons, because he cannot sustain that kind of performance for 2 hours.

I hear what you're saying, I can't count the number of times I've seen truly bonkers tricks in freestyle skiing and snowboard competitions, from people who screwed up their 2nd or 3rd run, or couldn't stitch together a coherent run around that one trick, and so came in near the middle of the rankings. But the winners were not significantly less impressive, just blunder-free. A lot of time, the winners were the peak performers moment-to-moment but sustained that performance for much longer.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#162

Post by Dove »

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…

Some of the best advice I've ever heard comes from the following observation:

    Blundering is often a result of trying to overplay a small advantage.
If you are playing thoughtfully, with an eye on the whole game, you are smart enough not to blunder. It's when you get excited about pursuing an opportunity that you overlook mistakes.

Play your advantages and play them hard. But don't lose sight of the big picture. Or alternatively, when you see an opportunity, look for the danger.

The insight has served me extremely well in competitive and security contexts, and I think it accounts for a lot of blunders in product design as well.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#163

Post by spxneo »

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…

very sound advice not just in sales but dating too

dont be a turn off dont signal turn off behaviour

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#164

Post by spxneo »

petsfed wrote: post #155
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…

i like this even better! so much workflows often get tainted by top down ego.

delegate and trust.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#165

Post by smartbear »

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…

(Author of article)

Sorry, that was supposed to be +, not * !

You're right. Just a typo! Now fixed.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#166

Post by setgree »

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…

I agree. I like the way Arnold Kling expresses a similar idea [1]: "One of my beliefs about competition is that the business world is very forgiving of mistakes... On October 11, 1999, our business, along with the Scottsdale relocation business, was sold to homestore.com for $85 million. My share was quite dilute by this point...But a couple of percent of $85 million is still real money, particularly considering the sequence of mistakes, miscalculations, misjudgments, and erroneous forecasts that led to it."

Kling and coworkers had an important insight about what the internet was going to do to home-buying. This made up, in part, for such obvious blunders as failing to buy MapQuest.

[1] https://arnoldkling.com/~arnoldsk/aimst2/aimst218.html

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#167

Post by arduanika »

gizmo wrote: post #97

The author seems to be at Elo 1100. At this level players don't think even a single move ahead and blunder their queen every other game. Slightly better amateur players realize that they should trade pieces once they're ahead to get to a winning end game. Avoiding blunders only works at chess at the lowest levels. It's the same for tennis. Complete amateurs can win just by returning the ball but at higher amateur lev…

Sure, and he makes this point right there in TFA:

"This observation applies only to amateur tennis. In professional tennis it’s just the opposite: 80% of the rallies are won rather than lost, as unforced errors are infrequent. This is true in chess as well, as high-level players don’t blunder, and thus it really is that litany of other skills that results in high standing."

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#168

Post by sourcepluck »

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).

He was an IM, skittish small fellow, something like ~2200 or ~2300, I can't remember. Table 1 was up on a little podium. So we go through the opening, middle-game, and this guy is just sitting back. Solid, non-threatening, relaxed, barely used any time on his clock. I'm sweating, taking ages, nervous, seeing dragons around each corner.

I try reason with myself: look, this guy is in a worse spot than you, he has more to lose, etc. He's waiting for you to make a mistake. He is avoiding exchanges, and making little probing threats, at best. Just breathe, stay in the game, let him attempt an attack! Just keep things solid, and don't blunder!

We go back and forth like this for at best 4 or 5 moves into the middlegame let's say.

His move: he smiles apologetically and takes the rook I just put on an unprotected square his bishop was very clearly hitting. I resign with an embarrassed look and whisper an apology for my stupidity.

My advice to anyone who is feeling too big for their jodhpurs: go study chess as hard as you can, for as long as you like, and then go play a few tournaments. 12-year-olds will wipe the floor with you and then their Mom will make them a sandwich while they move on with their life.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#169

Post by lgas »

lelanthran wrote: post #123
sotix wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simracing: getting faster doesn't make you win races. Getting more consistent does. I think this is absolutely true at the lower levels, but once you hit a baseline of consistency, the faster drivers do win races by simply being faster. It can be maddening them trying to recreate their line but still being an entire second per lap slower. But when racing closer to the beginner level, simply being able to complete e…

In the context of startups, everyone's at beginner level. For auto racing (whether sim or real), the #1 rule has always been "To finish first, first you must finish", which, as I see it, is a direct "make no blunders before worrying about a podium finish".

> In the context of startups, everyone's at beginner level.

Why would this be true? There are plenty of startup veterans that have been doing it for years.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#170

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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