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BGonline.org Forums
Proposed quantitative definition of skill
Posted By: Tom Keith In Response To: Proposed quantitative definition of skill (Timothy Chow)
Date: Tuesday, 19 June 2012, at 8:20 p.m.
Obviously different people have different ideas of what makes a game of skill, but I think an element that is important to many people is that a game of skill has long, continuously rising "yield curve." By that I mean, the more you study and practice, the better you get.
So an example of a good game of skill would be like this: You learn the rules in one minute. After 5 minutes of play you are significantly better than you were after learning the rules. After an hour of play you are signficantly better again. Then you start to get serious, read some strategy, and a day later you are significantly better again. Then you take lessons, keep practicing, and a month later you are better again. After a year of hard work, another significant improvement.
This would rule out games of pure chance because (unless you cheat) no amount of work makes you better. It would rule out games of superhuman calculation, because no amount of work would make you better there either. And it would rule out games of "measuring" such as who has the greater height. For all these games, the yield curve is flat.
Tic-tac-toe is a game of skill, but not a very good one because the "yield curve" rises quickly at first and then levels out.
If there are some perfectly skilled players who can almost always beat unskilled players, then there's a lot of skill involved, right?
If I weigh 100 pounds, there is nothing I can do to beat somebody in tug-of-war who weighs 300 pounds. Where's the skill in that? The other guy was just born with better genes. (However you might be able to turn tug-of-war into a game of skill by establishing weight classes.)
My thoughts,
Tom
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