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Another piece of evidence in favor of my view that pretty much all competitive games and sports are awful when perfectly optimized.

by slibhb 2y ago

vunderba 2y ago
What does "perfectly optimized" even mean? If you're suggesting that a game feels less meaningful because its predisposed towards memorization, I'm not sure that leaves a lot of games left on the proverbial table for you. Furthermore, there's quite a bit more to Scrabble strategy such as: - balancing your rack - the natural RNG from drawing tiles - time pressure - anagramming I guess here's hoping you can start an international tournament of world champions for Snakes and Ladders, or Candyland? More seriously, perhaps you'd enjoy Fischer Chess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960
- etrautmann 2y ago
  I agree with the parent that many games or sports are more fun to watch or participate in when not over optimized. Whether it’s the metagame, memorizing two letter words, or nailing a perfect serve in tennis or volleyball. It’s not fun for me to watch the very top where it’s so far optimized to have less variability, less serendipity, and less fun. Basketball may be an exception to that. All of this is personal opinion.
  - zem 2y ago
    scrabble is by no means over optimised; the randomness means every move is different, and single-game upsets (someone beating a much higher ranked player) are very common. what makes a champion is winning over the course of tens of games.
enragedcacti 2y ago
Memorizing the words is necessary but not sufficient, there is still a ton of strategy and interesting dynamics to scrabble beyond the word list. The one that's most interesting to me is that at high level play it starts as imperfect information game but progresses into a perfect information game. At the start your opponent's rack could have anything, but once the bag is mostly depleted the challenge is not just to find the best scoring play, but to find your best play relative to all your opponents best plays for all possible racks they could have.

Another piece of evidence in favor of my view that pretty much all competitive games and sports are awful when perfectly optimized.

by slibhb 2y ago

Another piece of evidence in favor of my view that pretty much all competitive games and sports are awful when perfectly optimized.

vunderba 2y ago

What does "perfectly optimized" even mean? If you're suggesting that a game feels less meaningful because its predisposed towards memorization, I'm not sure that leaves a lot of games left on the proverbial table for you. Furthermore, there's quite a bit more to Scrabble strategy such as: - balancing your rack - the natural RNG from drawing tiles - time pressure - anagramming I guess here's hoping you can start an international tournament of world champions for Snakes and Ladders, or Candyland? More seriously, perhaps you'd enjoy Fischer Chess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960

etrautmann 2y ago
I agree with the parent that many games or sports are more fun to watch or participate in when not over optimized. Whether it’s the metagame, memorizing two letter words, or nailing a perfect serve in tennis or volleyball. It’s not fun for me to watch the very top where it’s so far optimized to have less variability, less serendipity, and less fun. Basketball may be an exception to that. All of this is personal opinion.
- zem 2y ago
  scrabble is by no means over optimised; the randomness means every move is different, and single-game upsets (someone beating a much higher ranked player) are very common. what makes a champion is winning over the course of tens of games.

enragedcacti 2y ago

Memorizing the words is necessary but not sufficient, there is still a ton of strategy and interesting dynamics to scrabble beyond the word list. The one that's most interesting to me is that at high level play it starts as imperfect information game but progresses into a perfect information game. At the start your opponent's rack could have anything, but once the bag is mostly depleted the challenge is not just to find the best scoring play, but to find your best play relative to all your opponents best plays for all possible racks they could have.