Well described on Backgammon - you see a lot of similar frustration when two human players are at different skill levels, the lower skilled player is often frustrated by how the end game pans out from an apparently ok situation to a loss very quickly.
Your last paragraph slides in a big sting about life though. "Investing in lots of strategic assets" is one of those things that is a lot easier to do when you have a lot of resources to invest.
well, yes and ... everything's easier when you have a lot of resources, that's why they're called "resources". But bringing in the example of Eno was meant to get across that a lot of it is about having relationships, being part of scenes, having a wide spread of influences and interests ... not necessarily big financial outlays (which often tend to narrow your options down).
Backgammon players routinely laugh at poker players' bad beat stories. "Oh, your opponent hit a two-outer on the river? That's adorable!" Because a game of backgammon has more turns than a hand of poker, there are plenty of opportunities for really low-probability multiroll parleys to come in.
Getting really good at backgammon involves taming your emotional response to variance. This has obvious applications to trading, but in fact it will pay dividends all over your life.
I was once hustled at backgammon by a guy I met in the pub. I was learning the game and had got way better than my mates so was keen to have the experience of playing someone good, and the stakes seemed low enough to pay for a bit of fun. They were a lot less so after three contentious automatic doubles, a double offered and unwisely accepted, and a loss by a gammon. I wasn’t certain whether I’d just been thrashed or hustled until, when trying to persuade me to play again, he said I’d had unlucky dice. Nobody that good at the game would genuinely have thought that.
Many champion bridge players have also been backgammon enthusiasts, or even champions. Mike Lawrence, who wrote many excellent bridge books, also wrote a backgammon book, I think for love of the game; I don't know that it sells well.
The reason this interests me is that at some forms of scoring, bridge has characteristics that vitiate the backgammon strategy: the game payoff is non-linear, option-like, up to a point; but thereafter becomes linear again; how much you win or lose by starts to matter again. You could think of the payoff as being like a risk-reversal instead of a simple option. "Keeping your options open" in the course of a hand, where your starting goal is to make (or defeat) a contract is dependent upon the option-like payoff of the contract. But at IMPs or rubber bridge, that 3rd doubled undertrick can be pretty painful and you may reach a crossroads where your goal switches to damage minimization. So the backgammon thing can be read as bridge players imagining an ideal form of bridge, bridge as they would like it to be.
Well described on Backgammon - you see a lot of similar frustration when two human players are at different skill levels, the lower skilled player is often frustrated by how the end game pans out from an apparently ok situation to a loss very quickly.
Your last paragraph slides in a big sting about life though. "Investing in lots of strategic assets" is one of those things that is a lot easier to do when you have a lot of resources to invest.
well, yes and ... everything's easier when you have a lot of resources, that's why they're called "resources". But bringing in the example of Eno was meant to get across that a lot of it is about having relationships, being part of scenes, having a wide spread of influences and interests ... not necessarily big financial outlays (which often tend to narrow your options down).
Backgammon players routinely laugh at poker players' bad beat stories. "Oh, your opponent hit a two-outer on the river? That's adorable!" Because a game of backgammon has more turns than a hand of poker, there are plenty of opportunities for really low-probability multiroll parleys to come in.
Getting really good at backgammon involves taming your emotional response to variance. This has obvious applications to trading, but in fact it will pay dividends all over your life.
killer closing comment :)
Conversely, counterfactual blindness can be used to paint an agency-based explanation as less plausible than it really is.
'This could not have been planned, because such a plan would have to rely on luck [or incredible foresight]'.
Whereas any half-decent plan has plenty of contingency and adaptability built in.
See also 'positional' play in chess.
I was once hustled at backgammon by a guy I met in the pub. I was learning the game and had got way better than my mates so was keen to have the experience of playing someone good, and the stakes seemed low enough to pay for a bit of fun. They were a lot less so after three contentious automatic doubles, a double offered and unwisely accepted, and a loss by a gammon. I wasn’t certain whether I’d just been thrashed or hustled until, when trying to persuade me to play again, he said I’d had unlucky dice. Nobody that good at the game would genuinely have thought that.
Eno's pack of cards? Also diversity achieves same, then there's Taleb's antifragile? All about considering the 'what ifs'?
Many champion bridge players have also been backgammon enthusiasts, or even champions. Mike Lawrence, who wrote many excellent bridge books, also wrote a backgammon book, I think for love of the game; I don't know that it sells well.
The reason this interests me is that at some forms of scoring, bridge has characteristics that vitiate the backgammon strategy: the game payoff is non-linear, option-like, up to a point; but thereafter becomes linear again; how much you win or lose by starts to matter again. You could think of the payoff as being like a risk-reversal instead of a simple option. "Keeping your options open" in the course of a hand, where your starting goal is to make (or defeat) a contract is dependent upon the option-like payoff of the contract. But at IMPs or rubber bridge, that 3rd doubled undertrick can be pretty painful and you may reach a crossroads where your goal switches to damage minimization. So the backgammon thing can be read as bridge players imagining an ideal form of bridge, bridge as they would like it to be.