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BGonline.org Forums
Insightful comment about luck versus skill
Posted By: Perry Gartner In Response To: Insightful comment about luck versus skill (Joe Russell)
Date: Sunday, 15 August 2010, at 1:51 p.m.
Joe and Rich,
If you view volatility of skill as a short term phenomenon, which it is, then if you wish to characterize short term events as having luck outcomes, when the lesser skilled player performs better than the more skilled player, such as the golf examples you give, that’s fair. But, the length of the competition, 72 holes of shots in a typical pro tournament, is a longer term event and 30 or 40 of these are even better measurements that factor out the short term stats such as you cite. The bottom line is that measuring golf skill, as with backgammon should be based upon long term results.
Similarly, I have a different take on the golf examples that Joe gives. If one is so unskillful as to hit his ball close enough to a lake so it could roll in, then the risk of rolling in is part of that unskillful execution, and again in the long term those consequences will be “fair”, as will it when a person hits a tree and it bounds into play in the fairway as opposed to going into the woods. I say that because the unskillful player will be hitting many shots close to the water, or into the trees in the long term.
What I characterize as luck in golf is when you hit a perfect shot in the middle of the fairway and your ball rolls into a deep divot making your next shot much more difficult. Fortunately these kinds of occurances are not significant in the long term.
Perry
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