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niceguyanon comments on Open thread, March 17-31, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have recently been thinking about meta-game psychology in competitions, more specifically, knowledge of opponent's skill level and knowledge of opponent's knowledge of your own skill level, and how this all affects outcomes. In other words, instead of being 'psych out' by 'trash talk', is there any indication that you can be 'psyched out' by knowing how you rank up against other players. Any links for more information would be appreciated.
Part of my routine is to play a few games of on-line chess everyday. I noticed when ever an opponent with a vastly superior score comes in the room, my confidence is shaken before game play, I become nervous. If my opponent is only slightly better than me, I am calm and confident that I can win. Chess rating systems work by giving the worse ranked player more points for winning a match, this makes it so that if I am matched against a vastly inferior player than myself, I once again become nervous because I do not want to lose to such a player.
Here are my opponent's strength and how I feel before playing:
Over the last few months decided to block the rating of players that play with me and I noticed that I consistently feel more confident that I can win because I am no longer thinking about how much better or not better I am than my opponent. I don't know if it really helps, because my improvement can be attributable to playing more, not necessarily because I blocked out my opponent's rating and chat (Yes, people do trash talk in on-line chess and it does psych me out sometimes).
I am curious to know what other people's feelings are when it comes to knowledge of opponents skill, it would be nice to have a few responses filling out their feelings on the following:
It would be useful information to see what the majority reaction is, as useful strategies can be developed. For example, assuming most people are crushed to hear that they are vastly outmatched, and you are accurate about your skill being in the 5th percentile, then it would be beneficial in competition to make it known, perhaps?
A good example for the sometimes conflicting relationship between epistemic rationality (e.g. updating on all relevant pieces of information you encounter) and instrumental rationality (e.g. following the optimal route to your goal (=winning the match)).
In principle the information regarding your opponent's skill is very useful, since you'll correctly devote far more resources (time) to checking for elaborate traps when you deem your opponent capable of such, and waste less time until you accept an 'obvious' mistake, when committed by a far inferior opponent.
However, due to anxiety issues as the ones you laid out, there can be a benefit to willfully ignoring such information.
Also, per your wish,
The thing about your performance in a game being hurt by fear of a superior opponent's skill is basically the same as David Sirlin's idea of a "fear aura."
From the experience derived in many years of competitive Magic: the Gathering, I think I have a diferent map.
As can be inferred, I usually play my best game with opponents that are roughly my equal. Some of the difficoulties can be overcome by means of intense practice, i.e. making most of the decisions automatic, lessening the risk to punt them. It's also interesting to note, that my anxiety for playing against strogner opponents lessens itself if I get to know them. Probably my brains moves them from the "superhuman/demigod" box to the "human just like you" box allowing a clearer view of the situation.