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General principles of strategy / tactics / decision-making

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: Jan 02, 2018
12 min read

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Misc ideas

  • Link to the coursera course on General Game Playing, and that video in it which describes general principles (increase your options, try to decrease your opponent's options, etc.).
  • I need to write about how sometimes there's some heuristic that dominates all other considerations, like when I was playing poker and following a fairly simple heuristic and everyone else was trying to calculate pot odds.

 


Deny your opponents information / don't show weakness

Bas Rutten's Career MMA Fight #9 vs. Frank Shamrock

And again, like I said before, he's cross-facing me all the time. It's a thing that I really like to do also with opponents because it's really stressing your opponent; you can't look [to] the other side--obviously--if you [are being] cross-face[d]. You see (referring to his getting cross-faced again in the video): now I cannot look what happens to the left of me.

 

2015.09.27 - NYT - Putin’s Credo: Never Let Them See You Sweat

“We demonstrated weakness,” Mr. Putin said in another context, “and the weak are beaten.”


Divide and conquer

Examples

  • Adolf Hitler and Nazism
    • Example 1: The elimination of Nazism's political enemies in Germany.
      • The Nazis, like Stalin in Russia, purged the country of their political opponents as they gained more power. My understanding is that they were actually very successful at doing this.
      • Related: Poem: First they came ...
        • First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
          Because I was not a Socialist.
          Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
          Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
          Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
          Because I was not a Jew.
    • Example 2: The war itself.
      • I'm not sure how Hitler made the decision about which countries to attack first, but it seems to me that it might have been smarter to try to eliminate Russia before engaging in any kind of war with France and England.
      • He may have seen France and England as the more serious threats, that would make it more understandable that he would want to neutralize them first.

 Don't unthinkingly follow the advice you get from other people

  • People love to talk. People love to opine. A lot of people are willing to give others advice even if they aren't experts. If you lazily accept their advice as being the right answer, you may get screwed.

Frank Zappa

If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.

 

Bas Rutten's Career MMA Fight #11 vs. Ken Shamrock

And here we are against Ken Shamrock. I gotta tell you this story, I was training three weeks with a person and I said, "Listen, I want you to tell me how to stop me from getting into a knee bar", because I know Ken is very good at a knee bar. He told me, but he told me there was only one way. He should have told me a real easy thing, and I will show you right now what he should have told me...Watch what happens...He breaks my guard...and he goes for a half-guard. Now, the only thing that I have to do right now is grab a hold on Ken's right leg. If I hold that leg, he can never step over. But the person who told me said "No, no, he's gonna step it over your hip." So I was looking at my hip...and not anywhere else...See, I'm looking at my hip...and he swings it now, over my head. So he [the trainer] told me the wrong way. He should have told me, "Just hold his leg, nothing can happen." Anyway, this fight I lost again, but this was the last fight that I lost. After this I listened to nobody anymore. I found my own training partner, and that was it. No more losses for Bas Rutten.

Learn from / Practice to eliminate your weaknesses

Bas Rutten's Career MMA Fight #12 vs. Takaku Fuke

  • Bas was trained as a striker in his early career and lost several fights because of his ignorance of ground fighting. He was very smart about learning from his mistakes, though, and this fight was the first where he used his new knowledge of the ground game to win:

Now I'm getting good on the ground. Now I'm training two times a day, ground fighting. [...] See, now I don't let anybody go the side-mount anymore, because I start learning submissions. He didn't know that I was better on the ground now, so he's gonna make a mistake. I go back to the guard, I don't want to make any mistakes, I don't want to take any risks. [...] He's going to go for a leg lock right now but what a strange thing to do, because right now, I know leg locks too. Heel hook on the right, and now heel hook on his right leg. And that's it! Bas Rutten enters the world of submissions, ladies and gentlemen.

[...] He's going for a heel hook but as you can see, I defend myself by stretching my right leg. Now I'm pulling his right leg–his knee I'm pulling down, which exposes his heel, his right heel, and I was just pulling, and it's over, end of the story.

  • You also see Bas using cross face in this fight where he didn't in his earlier fights.

 

Bas Rutten's Career MMA Fight #13 vs. Maurice Smith

  • Just 2 fights earlier, Bas had lost to a particular combination. In this fight he uses the exact combination he lost to against a new opponent.

And I learn from my mistakes. You remember the knee bar with Ken Shamrock? Pushing the arm, and making a knee bar? I thought that was a good thing for me to do the same thing. Watch this...I'm gonna push his arm down, exactly like Ken Shamrock did with me, and then I go for the same knee bar that Ken Shamrock did to me. And voila! It actually works. And that was it!

[...]

I'm pushing his arm like I'm going for a figure-four–"distraction" is what they call that. Go around his face, all the way, 180 degrees, and go for the knee bar.

Prefer paths that are likely to achieve multiple objectives

Examples

  • Example: Changing my name stood to achieve multiple objectives.
    • It might help me avoid general job discrimination (although that wasn't really a motivator).
    • It might help me have a better chance with the types of women I found attractive.
    • It could later serve as a signal in my professional life that I was willing to do unusual things.
    • It gave me more experience doing things differently from other people, and dealing with the psychological / peer pressure that a person can face when doing something like that.
  • Example: My method for lowering my housing expenses stood to achieve multiple objectives.
    • It freed up money to be spent on other entrepreneurial projects.
    • I ended up more mobile than I was before.
    • It gave me experience being frugal.
    • It gave me experience working on an entrepreneurial project.
    • It gave me experience betting a lot of money on an idea and having it pay off.
    • It might later serve as a signal in my professional life that I was willing to do unusual things.

Prefer paths that are likely to leave you with more options

Examples

  • Example: My inclination to start a company that will let me live from anywhere.

Spend time thinking about which potential actions will actually affect your state

2014.05.16 - USC - 5 minute Commencement Speech

I've got apparently about five or six minutes to say the most useful things I can think of. I'm gonna do my best. And it was just that I distill things down to three items; I think I'll go with four. I think these are pretty important ones. Some of them are going to sound like well you've heard it before but it's worth reemphasizing.
(...)
Then, I'd say focus on signal over noise. A lot of companies get confused. They spend money on things that don't actually make the product better. So, for example, at Tesla we've never spent any money on advertising. We put all the money into R&D and manufacturing and design to try to make the car as good as possible. And I think that's the way to go, so...for any given company, just keep thinking about, "Are these efforts that people are expending, are they resulting in a better product or service?", and if they're not, stop those efforts.

 

Magic: The Gathering - CABS Theory

BOARD AFFECTING CARDS OR NOTHING
"It doesn't affect the board state, though."

I've said this so many times. I've even said it in this column, I'm sure. It's something I think about a lot when I'm evaluating a card, or building a deck, or making a choice in a booster draft.

My theory is that you can only have so many cards that don't affect the board state directly before your deck starts to suffer.

I call this "CABS" Theory, which is short for "Cards (that) Affect the Board State".

Most people don't factor in whether a card affects the board or not when they evaluate a card. The questions are usually centered around outright power level, "rate" (basically The Vanilla Test, but for all cards. Think "efficiency"), overall mana cost, etc. And this makes some sense, too. After all, many very strong cards don't directly affect the board state at all.

Spend time to get a view of the big picture

Examples

  • Solving global health issues

Train hard for a specific attack and execute it as rapidly as possible

Examples

Bas Rutten's Career MMA Fight #10 vs. Manabu Yamada

I trained hard for this fight, and I trained for a side-choke, knowing that he was a master in escaping situations, because if you can go 30 minutes against Ken [Shamrock] without getting submit[ted] one time, you've gotta be good.

He's in my half-guard right now...and now watch I'm gonna do a really tricky move, watch this...I'm gonna push him over...and now I slap a side-choke on. And I couldn't believe it, that I had the side-choke, so I gave it everything I had, I kept squeezing, and squeezing. And watch his right arm...it drops right now, he's already out, but I'm still squeezing as hard as I can. 

[...]

Slow motion please, here we go...I buck up, and watch what he does, he positions himself the wrong way, his left arm, he leaves it next to my head, which makes him very vulnerable for a side-choke...which I'm applying right now. The only thing I have to do right now to complete this whole choke, to make it way more dangerous and effective, is to put him on his back, and that's what I'm doing right now.


The Duel of the Century - The Judicial Combat of Jarnac and Châtaigneraye - France, 1547

  • This was one of the most memorable stories I have ever heard.
  • The ARMA page goes on and on with lots of details, but the basic story is this: A really experienced fighter challenged a totally-inexperienced fighter to a duel. The inexperienced guy was allowed to choose the weapon, so he listed like 30 different weapons that they might use on the day of the duel. The inexperienced guy then trained really hard with just one of those weapons, and trained really hard with just a single tricky move with that weapon that he could execute at the beginning of the fight. The move wasn't designed to be a finishing move (a move that would outright kill the opponent); it was designed to be enough to disable the opponent. He then used that move as soon as he could.
 More details from the ARMA page...

Brantôme wrote that Châtaigneraye was “big, brave and valiant…one of the strongest and most skillful men…with all weapons and techniques…and as a fighter, because besides his strength he had great skill.”  He described Châtaigneraie as being of middle height, well-built, muscular, and wiry, and that Jarnac was two inches taller. (Powell, p. 61). In contrast, he described Jarnac as being “in no way his equal in strength or prowess” and even afraid of the coming fight.(Billacois, p. 50). One source maintains Châtaigneraye was the most expert swordsman in France at the time and an expert wrestler. Supposedly not a wrestler in all of Brittany could stand against him.  This should come as no surprise as a traditional man at arms of the time was skilled not just in the use of weapons on foot or horse, but generally also in unarmed techniques.Châtaigneraye had in fact won several previous duels precisely by rushing his opponents and wrestling them to the ground where he killed them with his dagger. In the 1520s, Chastaigneraye had fought a judicial duel with one Lautrec, the former using a sword and buckler and the latter a sword and pike. (Powell, p. 169).

Each of the parties had a month to prepare for the duel. While the confident Châtaigneraye for the most part relaxed and partied, the less experienced Jarnac sought out lessons from an Italian fencing master named either Caise or Captain Caizo, said to be a man of great skill and renown. The pious Jarnac also spent considerable time attending church, visiting monasteries and convents and urging the people to pray for him (although, after the duel there is no record of his continued piety). Whereas Châtaigneraye was so confident of his pending victory in contrast, that at great personal expense he arranged to have an extravagant feast prepared which would take place just outside the duel’s enclosure immediately following the combat!  Perhaps the arrogant move was also an attempt to psych-out his opponent. 

As the challenged party Jarnac had choice of weapons and was in no hurry to decide.  In the month before the fight, Jarnac and his allies made attempts to delay the affair, including efforts at procuring numerous expensive and uncommon weapons that presumably would take awhile to obtain. One historian of this duel states that Jarnac proposed no less than 30 different weapons for foot or horseback as well as the type of horses and saddles to be used.  The great expense of having to prepare so many sets of possible weapons for the combat led Châtaigneraye to supposedly say, “This man wants to fight both my valour and my purse.” Perhaps Jarnac was buying time to absorb his fencing lessons –which reportedly included learning from Caizo the technique he was to use, a low strike to the back of the knee designed to put an opponent out of action.  Reputedly Chastaigneraye had spent a month practicing the move. On the other hand, seeing as how the combatants closely knew one another (for the two were actually neighbors and kinsmen and had grown up together), Jarnac might very well have been employing a deception of his own against his confidant adversary.  Perhaps even Caizo considered something of the man's method or physique when contemplating how to instruct the less experienced Jarnac? We might also wonder if, having known one another for sometime, Jarnac was familiar with Châtaigneraie's personal style of fighting? We know the two combatants had indeed tested one another at arms many times and, as the chronicler Monluc later added, they well-knew the other's mettle (Powell, p. 60).

[...]

Descriptions of the Fight 

The result was not immediate.  One source described that while Châtaigneraye was aggressive and Jarnac defensive, a few attacks were made by both in the first moments so that each received small cuts on their arms –presumably below their maile armor and above their gauntlets. (Truman, p. 180). Following right after a pause in the action is when Jarnac made his fateful attack which so effectively decided the outcome. 

The herald of the combat later described that, “there were several great thrusting as well as cutting attacks, one of which on the part of the said Jarnac struck the calf of the left leg of the said La Châtaigneraie as he made a thrust at Jarnac; and Jarnac struck another blow on the same calf of the leg.”  At this La Châtaigneraie fell to the ground, unable to rise with the tendons in the calf of his leg evidently severed. Another source however stated both of Châtaigneraie’s legs were cut, one after the other, while still another said the blows were independent and not consecutive, with Jarnac struggling to rise between them.  One source also claimed Jarnac hesitated after the blow, as if he himself was surprised by his success.Brantôme recorded that Châtaigneraie evidently made two frail attempts to spring at Jarnac -who refused to come near his wounded foe. (Powell, p. 48).

The writer John Cockburn’s often cited version described that as Châtaigneraie made an attack, Jarnac delivered a slicing cut behind one of his legs (to the ham or knee, sources are not in agreement). This move, later to be called the “coup de Jarnac”, was likely just a traversing movement with a well-aimed and well-timed cut. However, the various accounts are largely specific that from this first slicing blow, Chastaigneraye instantly fell down to the ground.


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