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The Bill Barnwell aphorism reads pretty empty to me. You could just as easily flip it to: "In the first half, your only goal is to minimize your opponent's expe
by loganfrederick 13y ago
The Bill Barnwell aphorism reads pretty empty to me. You could just as easily flip it to: "In the first half, your only goal is to minimize your opponent's expected points. You don't know exactly how many points they will need until the end."
His phrase doesn't really have any impact on the argument being made here unless you really dissect the relative importance of offense versus defense in the game, which requires a lot more evidence to make a case one way or the other.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoYou have missed the point of what Barnwell is saying. He is saying that tactical calling of plays to trade expected point value against variance do not make sense in the first half, because you don't know how close it's going to be. To illustrate: in an infinitely long game, you always pick whatever gives you the highest expected value. In a game with one play left, you always pick the play with the highest probability to put you over the amount of points the opponent has, even if has a lower expected value than other plays. The quote is saying that the first half is more similar to playing an infinitely long game than a game with one play left.