The author stated, "Third, a good competitive game should test a player’s skills and minimize the element of chance or luck. Ideally, the probability of a weak player defeating a good player should be as close to zero as possible."
Do you think this is always the case? I'm thinking about texas hold 'em, which has short-term variability but the stronger players win over the long run with a better strategy. Does chance have a place in competitive gaming?
The relevant quote here is, "People don't gamble on Chess."
A luck element lets players of uneven skill feel engaged. Even better is a great handicapping system like Go has, but that's notoriously hard to design.
Chess is a great game at certain skill levels and has a lot of beauty to it, but games with enough of a skill difference aren't really interesting for either player unless the better player is teaching/mentoring.
So yeah, luck has some place in letting different people (and even gamble) together.
I know some people who actually gamble on chess. The thing is, that even with a perfect game (not saying that chess is perfect) you still have the human factors involved. The spirit, the concentration of both players today, the pressure involved when betting money or playing in front of observers. There is still a lot of margin left.
I guess there wouldn't be any incentive for weaker players to bet if they were guaranteed to lose money every game! I find that issue with chess... I'm better than my friends (who have only played a handful of times) but get smoked online or by serious players.
This is a pretty common position amongst competitive gamers, but I disagree with it strongly.
I think that the issue is that people feel cheated if they are in the zone/on a perfect run, and have that pulled from under them by chance. However, I would contest that having some risk makes it more exciting.
Another likely issue is the fear that your tactics and your highly drilled skills might become less relevant if some elements of the game are based on chance/randomized. It essentially negates some of your time investment in the game. For myself, I think that it's more interesting to have to adapt your tactics to new situation. I also find the skills that a game involving chances emphasizes tend away from the repetitive and towards general strategy, for example: map knowledge becomes less important compared to scouting.
Yes. In Starcraft, it is not uncommon for players to attempt to force a win by going for an all-in strategy that sacrifices long-term income for lots of first-tier combat units. The chance aspect is that there are more starting locations than there are players. If your opponent does not find you quickly enough and you are relatively close, both of which are purely matters of chance, you can overrun them, almost regardless of skill differences.
In Texas Hold 'Em, competitive matches are rarely decided in a single hand; rather, they are played out over many hands through the course of a day. When you average out over dozens of hands, a substantially worse player actually does have an almost zero chance of besting a superior player.
It is well known that luck plays a major role in all the big competitions in Texas Hold'em. In a field of a thousand players, the best players usually have no more than a .2% or a .3% chance of winning at the very best. (Thus the best players win 2 or 3 times more often than the average players).
For heads-up play (a match between two players), the winrate of a winning player versus a substantially worse player is can be anywhere from 4 big blinds/100 hands to 20 big blinds/100 hands. The standard deviation is more like 140 big blinds/100 hands. This means that you have to play quite a while to have an almost zero chance of winning, even against a substantially worse player. Most professional poker players even have an occasional losing month (let's say one a year an average).
Comments
The author stated, "Third, a good competitive game should test a player’s skills and minimize the element of chance or luck. Ideally, the probability of a weak player defeating a good player should be as close to zero as possible."
Do you think this is always the case? I'm thinking about texas hold 'em, which has short-term variability but the stronger players win over the long run with a better strategy. Does chance have a place in competitive gaming?
The relevant quote here is, "People don't gamble on Chess."
A luck element lets players of uneven skill feel engaged. Even better is a great handicapping system like Go has, but that's notoriously hard to design.
Chess is a great game at certain skill levels and has a lot of beauty to it, but games with enough of a skill difference aren't really interesting for either player unless the better player is teaching/mentoring.
So yeah, luck has some place in letting different people (and even gamble) together.
I know some people who actually gamble on chess. The thing is, that even with a perfect game (not saying that chess is perfect) you still have the human factors involved. The spirit, the concentration of both players today, the pressure involved when betting money or playing in front of observers. There is still a lot of margin left.
I guess there wouldn't be any incentive for weaker players to bet if they were guaranteed to lose money every game! I find that issue with chess... I'm better than my friends (who have only played a handful of times) but get smoked online or by serious players.
This is a pretty common position amongst competitive gamers, but I disagree with it strongly.
I think that the issue is that people feel cheated if they are in the zone/on a perfect run, and have that pulled from under them by chance. However, I would contest that having some risk makes it more exciting.
Another likely issue is the fear that your tactics and your highly drilled skills might become less relevant if some elements of the game are based on chance/randomized. It essentially negates some of your time investment in the game. For myself, I think that it's more interesting to have to adapt your tactics to new situation. I also find the skills that a game involving chances emphasizes tend away from the repetitive and towards general strategy, for example: map knowledge becomes less important compared to scouting.
Yes. In Starcraft, it is not uncommon for players to attempt to force a win by going for an all-in strategy that sacrifices long-term income for lots of first-tier combat units. The chance aspect is that there are more starting locations than there are players. If your opponent does not find you quickly enough and you are relatively close, both of which are purely matters of chance, you can overrun them, almost regardless of skill differences.
In Texas Hold 'Em, competitive matches are rarely decided in a single hand; rather, they are played out over many hands through the course of a day. When you average out over dozens of hands, a substantially worse player actually does have an almost zero chance of besting a superior player.
It is well known that luck plays a major role in all the big competitions in Texas Hold'em. In a field of a thousand players, the best players usually have no more than a .2% or a .3% chance of winning at the very best. (Thus the best players win 2 or 3 times more often than the average players).
For heads-up play (a match between two players), the winrate of a winning player versus a substantially worse player is can be anywhere from 4 big blinds/100 hands to 20 big blinds/100 hands. The standard deviation is more like 140 big blinds/100 hands. This means that you have to play quite a while to have an almost zero chance of winning, even against a substantially worse player. Most professional poker players even have an occasional losing month (let's say one a year an average).