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Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

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Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#191

Post by ljm »

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.

Prep first and follow the recipe. It’s not as hard as it seems if you get all your ingredients ready and then start cooking. It is literally a list of instructions. It tells you what to do. No imagination needed.

It becomes a lot easier to fuck it up if you try to prep on the fly because you’ll never get the timing right, which means you won’t be following the instructions any more.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#192

Post by greedo »

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…

Most blunders (at least 1500 ELO and below) are often board observation blunders, where your board vision lets you down. Either you're too tunnel visioned on your own attack or you just expose yourself to simple tactics. When I first started playing online, I would routinely blunder my queen roughly 10% of the time. Luckily I've improved and only do it 9% of the time...

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#193

Post by petsfed »

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.

This neatly encapsulates why (and how) Pabst Blue Ribbon beer plausibly (but never confirmed) won that blue ribbon in 1893: at a time when beer was especially hard to get just right, tasting the same every time is a huge technical win.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#194

Post by bsder »

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.

> Goodness I wonder what methods one could use to reduce their blunder rate.

Checklist:

1) Is there a checkmate? Yeah, you might want to stop it if you don't want to lose.

2) Is there a check? Checks are forcing and can make you do things you don't want to do. You probably want to prevent them.

3) Is there a capture? A piece with no defenders that can be grabbed probably needs to have something done about it.

4) Is there an undefended piece? Undefended pieces become capturable. Defend it.

5) Do you have any plan at all? Even a bad one is better than none at all.

The problem is that there are lots of these on a board. When you first start doing this, it's a slow process, and it is not fun. But you will get much better very quickly.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#195

Post by Retric »

anamexis wrote: post #190
Retric wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, 1-2 blunders are more believable in that context, and uhh ouch. Anyway, it’s still an extreme edge case which says nothing about most games.

My point was that it's not an extreme edge case, it's quite common, even at the 700-1000 chess.com ELO level.

Someone dying in a car accident is frequent/common as in happening several times a day, but it’s still an extreme edge case in terms of the average trip.

If we’re talking about the average game you simply need to look at all time controls to get an accurate understanding not pick an uncommon example and arbitrarily suggest it’s representative of the general case.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#196

Post by anamexis »

Retric wrote: post #195
anamexis wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was that it's not an extreme edge case, it's quite common, even at the 700-1000 chess.com ELO level.

Someone dying in a car accident is frequent/common as in happening several times a day, but it’s still an extreme edge case in terms of the average trip. If we’re talking about the average game you simply need to look at all time controls to get an accurate understanding not pick an uncommon example and arbitrarily suggest it’s representative of the general case.

Do you have better data, or are you just being an asshole?

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#197

Post by RachelF »

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.

It is the same with military history. Many wars are lost because of blunders, often your military can do more damage to itself than an enemy can do.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#198

Post by hehhehaha »

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?

Ya but simple mistakes can turn +ev to -ev, and if you miscalculate and scale up on -ev, then that can wipe out your +ev for hours

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#199

Post by Retric »

anamexis wrote: post #196
Retric wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone dying in a car accident is frequent/common as in happening several times a day, but it’s still an extreme edge case in terms of the average trip. If we’re talking about the average game you simply need to look at all time controls to get an accurate understanding not pick an uncommon example and arbitrarily suggest it’s representative of the general case.

Do you have better data, or are you just being an asshole?

> 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.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#200

Post by anamexis »

Retric wrote: post #199
anamexis wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have better data, or are you just being an asshole?

> 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.
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