How to play with people who are better than you • Hacker News Board

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#41

Post by random42 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:20 AM UTC

mjfl wrote: post #36

tapland wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is no excitement or any possibility of winning motivating you to even pretent do put effort in

Doesn't seem like you are playing to pass the time, in that case. Seems like you are playing to win. The difference is in the former case the play is the reward in itself and in the latter case you need to feel victory over someone. Seems crypto-competitive and kind of weird for that reason.

He is playing for enjoyment and recreation. Playing and losing to Steph Curry does not give him that. Playing competitively with his friends does it.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#42

Post by Kaibeezy » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

In grad school, I had access to a pool table and played nearly every day with a classmate who was already highly skilled. We were very competitive, and soon equally matched.

A couple of years later, after going separate ways, we met up at a pool hall. After a few games, it wasn’t even close.

Neither of us had played much for a few years. The difference was my friend’s sharp skills had deteriorated, whereas my advantage had often been from taking “creative” higher-risk/higher-reward shots—a “skill” that didn’t suffer as much from lack of practice.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#43

Post by Juliate » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #40

"With ‘fairness’ built in, everyone has an equal chance of winning without compromising their playing style." This must be a joke, right? What's the point of playing games? To feel good about oneself?!

The point of playing is ... playing. :) It's the journey. Not the win or loss.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#44

Post by friendlybus » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #4

Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing. Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill. Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty…

Rats won't play with each other unless the smaller rat wins 30% of the time, even though he will lose every game if the larger rat chooses to do win every game.

A decade ago Call of Duty 4 introduced an under-barrel grenade launcher for the m16 rifle as a way to get easy kills even if you could not aim. The devs called it 'first order optimal strategy' and players called it the noobtube. CoD4 did the right thing, every new player still gets stomped but it ends up being roughly 4-20 instead of 0-24. Game design on this matters.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#45

Post by mjfl » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

random42 wrote: post #41

mjfl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem like you are playing to pass the time, in that case. Seems like you are playing to win. The difference is in the former case the play is the reward in itself and in the latter case you need to feel victory over someone. Seems crypto-competitive and kind of weird for that reason.

He is playing for enjoyment and recreation. Playing and losing to Steph Curry does not give him that. Playing competitively with his friends does it.

I must be a different neurotype from you people. If I saw someone get upset, lack enjoyment out of playing basketball with, and losing to Steph Curry, I would think that person is a loser. To each their own.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#46

Post by friendlybus » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

dorkwood wrote: post #3

I never liked the idea of explicitly changing the rules in order to make a game more fair for new players. If you become accustomed to changing the rules whenever you find yourself outmatched, and then find yourself in a situation where the rules can't be changed for whatever reason, then you're not going to enjoy yourself. It's much more enjoyable for everyone, in my opinion, to play by the same rules as the group,…

Are you supposed to enjoy it when you can't change the rules for any reason? People find great enjoyment in cheating the rules and being masters of their own fate.

Playing one game sure, playing a hundred games.. maybe. Some games are built with a design philosophy that make it difficult to win in a very un-enjoyable way. There's a reason we moved on from restarting the whole game when you died in Prince of Persia to a more streamlined experience in modern games.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#47

Post by School-Cotton » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #23

narag wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned chess playing always against a friend that won every single time. I didn't give up. I joined a club and improved. After some months I played again with my friend and I won. That was the last game he played against me. Moral? Not sure. I like to win sometimes, but I don't mind losing most times if that teachs me something. Playing against someone much better than you sharpens your perception, reactions, ever…

By the sound of it your intent was to win eventually. You could imagine winning, and with some effort you did win. I think that's subtly different to playing against people who you will never beat regardless of how much effort you put in. dragontamer's example of Magnus Carlsen is a good one - he was in the top 1000 players in the world when he was 12, and become World Champion at 22. He's intuitively good at chess.…

The learning thing is sort of irrelevant since you can install a program on your laptop that is strategically better than 99% of humans and tactically better than 100% (which we now know through experience is enough to beat 100% of humans, even the ones with superior strategic reasoning).

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#48

Post by beefield » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:42 AM UTC

anonymousDan wrote: post #22

I always thought that was one of the nice things about golf. The handicap system means you can have a wide variety of skill levels playing in the same competition with everyone having a reasonable chance of winning.

Personally, I find that stupid. If you want a chance to win, do not play against Tiger woods but play against your peers at your club and have different tiers so that the better players seek to not play in the games where the not so good ones play.

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#49

Post by vnorilo » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:42 AM UTC

The handicap in Go [1] works amazingly well. I have had enjoyable games with dan-level players despite being at best conversant at the game.

That said, I've also enjoyed such games immensely with no handicap, despite no prospect of winning at all. In most games you can have some partial success and psychological reward despite losing the game.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(go)

Re: How to play with people who are better than you

#50

Post by tachion » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 9:43 AM UTC

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