That dawg and variance in games

I was chatting with a few friends one day, discussing the NBA playoffs, when they started delving into various plays and showing each other videos of bad coaching. Offhandedly, I commented that I’m probably missing something when it comes to spatial awareness: I found their conversation uninteresting and difficult to keep up with. This isn’t to say that I don’t like basketball. I love playing and watching basketball: my home team during good years, and various West coast matchups this season. What surprised me was when both of them turned to me and said “you know what, you actually just don’t care that much about winning.”

I protested indignantly that of course I cared about winning. I worked hard when we played. Was this because I didn’t get upset when we lost? They then clarified their point: “you don’t think too much about the game that we play before or after the fact, you show no desire to improve and you’re happy just showing up and jumping around.” My kneejerk reaction continued to be confusion and denial. What did I play basketball for if not to win? But they weren’t altogether wrong. Even if I lose every game that day, I’m happy if I made my shots, grabbed a few key rebounds, and stole a ball or too.

I’ve always seen myself as a competitive person. I liked games, and I always played to win. It never occurred to me to sandbag a little to make things a little more interesting, but sometimes I wouldn’t work as hard if it seemed as though we were going to win anyways. There would be small mistakes I didn’t need to make, but did so anyways because I wasn’t as strict with myself. I play all variety of games: races are superior fun than running, full-court is better than a drill, and poker is more fun than combinatorics.

But it was true that I didn’t have that dawg in me. I didn’t have that Mamba Mentality. My unwillingness to do drills leads to poorer performance on the court. Not studying pre-flop tables makes me a significantly weaker poker player. In basketball, Kobe Bryant is an icon of the sport, and represents hard work. Everyone famous basketball player has a legendary Kobe story about wanting to be the first at the gym in the morning, and seeing Kobe having already finished his workout, or seeing him get up hundreds of shots after a game. After him, Mamba Mentality was coined, and it meant the willingness to lock-in and work hard to achieve greatness at any cost. On the other side of the spectrum, was pure talent. This would be embodied by the great Allen Iverson; when questioned about missing practice, he gave the now famous “we talking about practice?” tirade, in which he stresses that his in-game performance was unparalleled, and seems to think that practice is below him.

Of course, these are professional basketball players. Those who play games for fun aren’t generally expected to practice. Yet I certainly fall on the Allen Iverson side of the spectrum; not that I have pure talent and don’t need to practice, but man is it boring. In fact, steady play is boring too. Good defense in basketball relies on staying in front of the defender. I prefer attempting steals, which is honestly low expected-value and gives an advantage to the offensive player. Good poker play involves gradual raises with strong hands to ward off weaker draws and bluffs, as well as to narrow an opponent’s range. I prefer trapping, which conceals the strength of a hand solely for the purpose of a big play later, which may or may not materialize.

Giving a little thought to the sorts of games I do like to play, I’ve realized that one of the aspects of games that appeals to me the most is the variance, the uncertainty of outcome. Chess, for example, is not a game that I play. I know the rules, but if someone asks, I would say that I don’t play chess. I know no openings, and no strategy, and frankly it’s not that fun. The better player wins ninety-five times out of a hundred. Whereas for a game like Catan, or Dominion, how the cards are stacked plays a larger role. I would say I like games where the better player wins eight times out of ten. I’m not blind to the idea of skill differential, but I do find it interesting that in this year’s NBA finals, the better team won four times out of five. When I play trick taking games, I’m always calculating the odds of shooting the moon or its equivalent.

So perhaps winning isn’t what’s most important to me in games, it’s the delusions of grandeur that have me chasing the highs of unlikely plays. This is the point in my essay where I self-reflect and psychoanalyze: what does this say about me? One way to read it would be to think that I am a man of adventure and risk, that I cannot sit still, and thrive in intense situations. Though I wish this to be true, and I may repeat some or all of it during a job interview, it doesn’t represent me. I work a desk job, and my hobbies are reading and writing. Occasionally, I’ll play a sport or two, though apparently I don’t want to win when I do. What logically follows is that the inverse is true. My life is so stable and uninteresting, that I turn to controlled stimulation in games to spice it up. Moreover, in comparison to the others who live stale, bean-counting lives, mine is even more boring, such that I crave excitement more than they do. Of course, this all operates under the assumption that everyone has the same interest in excitement. Perhaps I simply have a higher tolerance for it, and will seek it out regardless.

Whatever the cause, I think it’s good that I’ve become aware of my preferred playstyle and mentality when it comes to games. I could use this to motivate myself more, like reading a book on chess sacrifices and gambits. Certainly, the knowledge that I play for the thrill of it and not to win will cause some revaluation of my decisions in those situations when I really do want to win. In life, I could build plans with a little more slack in them, reducing the odds of catastrophic downline failure. No practice and no Mamba Mentality, but a smidge less risk could do me a whole lot of good.