Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#61

Post by ffsm8 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:46 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #31

Jensson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This leads to analysis paralysis. Building things helps you think clearer.

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.

It really doesn't, unless you've already implemented a variation of the thing before.

There is a time for reflection and planning/thinking about a given software problem, but you're mostly wasting time doing so in-depth before you've done/looked through a rudimentary implementation.

Your planned architecture will be worse then the one from the person that interated several times while introspecting the resulting code, discovering misconceptions on the way.

Do note that this initial implementation is only there to learn the domain of the software, basically.

The phase can be skipped if you're not really changing anything and mostly just reimplement something you've done before. At that point, you're not doing something new however.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#62

Post by salamo » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:48 AM UTC

As a side note, I think this blunder-centric approach to chess is underappreciated, especially at low to mid levels where the vast majority of players peak. In addition to working on tactics, players should also specifically work on not blundering.

What this means in practice would be something like an "anti-tactic". In normal tactics, we need to find the best move which will usually win the game or give a decisive advantage. But an anti-tactic is a fight with your intuition: you want to make a move but that move is actually a blunder. There are several correct answers but one or two attractive but very wrong answers.

Of course the "rest of the owl" is how to determine which moves are very attractive to certain players. That is something I am working on now.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#63

Post by exceptione » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 8:50 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #31

Jensson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This leads to analysis paralysis. Building things helps you think clearer.

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?

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#64

Post by weinzierl » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:09 AM UTC

chillfox wrote: post #35

bjackman wrote: post #29

I think this is very true, I've found the same thing in e.g: - Simracing: getting faster doesn't make you win races. Getting more consistent does. - Squash: getting stronger and faster doesn't make you win games, getting less exhausted does, because you make less mistakes. These are surely not true when you're at a high level, but for most people it's the right focus. The corresponding insight for building software i…

"These are surely not true when you're at a high level" I don't know what you mean by high level, but I suspect that avoiding mistakes continues to be very important regardless of level in most things. I play Marvel Snap in the top 1000 and at that level most of the games comes down to whoever makes a mistake first loses.

I'd go even farther than that and suspect that in many areas avoiding blunders gets more important climbing to higher levels.

Just the other day I explained this to my daughter:

In our school system a 1 is the best grade a 6 the worst.

Maintaining a 2.0 average is kind of easy. When you blunder and get a 3, all you have to so is getting a 1 eventually to compensate.

Maintaining a 1.0 average is much, much harder, because you have to write 1s consistently without any exception and no way to fix a blunder(*).

In many systems there is a hard ceiling of what you can achieve. When your performance is measured as an average, this makes the system more unforgiving for blunders the closer you are to the ceiling.

(*) Technically, in our school system this is not entirely correct, because I think you could theoretically get 0.7s. The overall point still stands, because there is a hard and positive limit.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#65

Post by scotty79 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:13 AM UTC

But the blunders are where all the fun is.

Apart from them, games are boring mechanistic jobs.

If the enemy doesn't blunder I start to blunder as I'm getting more and more bored with the game.

If enemy plays bad I also get bored and blunder.

Anything to put the spark back into the activity that was supposed to be engaging.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#66

Post by high_5 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:13 AM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #18

none_to_remain wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating code is the lowest level of programming. Deleting code is much more refined. Preventing code is sublime.

This leads to analysis paralysis. Building things helps you think clearer.

Not necessarily. You might end up just building things on top of things spiral which reduces the ability to think clearly.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#67

Post by smatija » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:17 AM UTC

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…

These evaluation-centric definitions of blunder are a bit awkward though.

Traditionally blunders were defined in more player-centric way: player blundered, when he made a mistake obvious enough, that a player of his strength is very unlikely to make. So what is a blunder for a strong player may merely be a mistake for a weaker player.

Problem with evaluation-centric definition is that not all moves that worsen position by 14% are equally obvious - if you hang a queen in one that is certainly a blunder, if you miss a non-trivial sacrificial combination on the other hand...

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#68

Post by zheng_qm » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:31 AM UTC

It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

-- Charlie Munger

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#69

Post by salamo » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:34 AM UTC

smatija wrote: post #67

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…

These evaluation-centric definitions of blunder are a bit awkward though. Traditionally blunders were defined in more player-centric way: player blundered, when he made a mistake obvious enough, that a player of his strength is very unlikely to make. So what is a blunder for a strong player may merely be a mistake for a weaker player. Problem with evaluation-centric definition is that not all moves that worsen positi…

Chess.com is also definitely using an evaluation-centric definition to label moves as blunders. The issue is that this definition is also some function of the change in winning probability.

> So what is a blunder for a strong player may merely be a mistake for a weaker player.

Statistically this intuition appears to be correct. Your winning probability is still more than 25% when down a queen against an 800 rated player, but under 10% if playing a 2200: https://web.chessdigits.com/articles/when-should-you-resign#...

So it would make sense for the definition to take into account the opponent's Elo rating.

Re: Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

#70

Post by joss82 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 9:42 AM UTC

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.