『原文出处』
http://othellogateway.com/othello/blog.php?p=253
『作者』 Ben Seeley
发表时间 2006-06-22 22:45:03
It took me years to learn this, but I did finally learn about a limitation of blitz I had never seen before. This is the problem of games being limited by the instinctual fear of complexity that most people have. You see, in blitz games, people generally don't want to generate complexity if they can help it. Because when you have to deal with a level of complexity that is beyond your intuitive ability, and do it under time pressure, it can make your head hurt. My head as well as anyone else's. The fact that it will hurt the opponent's head, too, and thus isn't necessarily a disadvantage at all, doesn't stop people from preferring simplicity to complexity.
This fear of uncertainty and complexity is probably the number one reason for players not making the good moves in blitz that they would otherwise be capable of in longer games, and which they might even be attracted to at first glance, anyway. I see it all the time- a player needs to let an edge hang (meaning either player can take it at any time), or be comfortable with not being able to see what is likely to happen next (because the right move opens up a huge variety of possible outcomes- the opponent could forcibly take a corner, they could force YOU to take a corner, they could control a diagonal, they could force YOU to control a diagonal, etc.- widely divergent possibilities, which are hard to simultaneously contain in the mind). But they take the plunge because those things obviously trigger all sorts of fears- who wants to make a choice where the outcome isn't clear, who would want to fly blind? There's a reason people fear the dark- who knows what lurk in there, after all? Any number of unseen threats could be in there.
So, almost every player has an instinctual preference for the conservative and familiar, rather than for the aggressive and unknown, and this tendency magnifies itself the shorter the time limit happens to be. Obviously, in longer games, there is more time to calculate everything out, and for a player to feel comfortable making what would at first glance seem like a potentially fatal move. They've had the time to shine a light on every corner of the dark room, and consider it safe to enter.
The practical implication of all this, for me, is that I get a lot of easy wins when players negatively react to complexity and uncertainty, and so they choose the simpler, worse move, which obviously makes my job even easier than if they had chosen a poor and complexifying move. But it's really not so entertaining to me to get easy wins... and so lately I've been enjoying playing the Japanese blitzer who goes by smif_n on Kurnik, and numerous other 22xx nicknames on Yahoo Japan. He's the polar opposite; he has a natural appetite for aggressive and complex moves and positions, which causes everyone major problems. He's great at being alert to not doing what is predictable. Both in defense, tenaciously avoiding simplistic lines that have a loss threat, and on offense, playing dangerous and aggressive moves when he is winning, to do his utmost to make his opponent's surprised and confused.
Needless to say, I am as human as anyone else, and so this player regularly embarasses me in our matches, nearly wiping me out on a few occasions. Though thankfully I can still win nearly 2/3, so my ego still has its shreds of dignity. But it's great fun to be so aggressively challenged at all times, and I often have fun returning the favor to him- and it works well on him, too.
Perhaps he takes the novelty factor too far, in that I have often seen him botch wins in situations where most players would get it right, because all he has to do is play the simplest and most natural move, but apparently his instincts are so strongly oriented in the other direction that it's hard for him to see that! But he definitely chose the best simplistic style he could have, for blitz. Playing aggressively and daringly is the best style in blitz, as far as a simplistic style is concerned. Whereas in long games, the best single style would be more careful and meticulous- even if you are Murakami, and play an aggressive style of play, it still has to be matched with carefulness or else it won't work when opponents have a great deal more time to find the opportunities left for them.
Which brings me back to my issue with blitz- it's that there are so many kinds of challenges which could occur in long games (because people have the time to develop plans they would otherwise not dare to enact in blitz games), which almost never occur in blitz games. The simplification urge in blitz radically diminishes the overall complexity scale within those games, and game for game, over large cross-section of games, the longer games will have a greater variety of potential challenges. For some people, they have an issue with the qualityof blitz games, but that's never been my problem. I just like to experience the widest possible range of challenges that I can. So while playing blitz could potentiall create more games and thus more possible challenges over a given span of time, the long games end up involving a higher rate of novelty and challenge, even if there aren't as many challenges, total. A real dilemma, but one I generally have had to solve by playing a mix of timers, a mix of opponents. Or ideally I meet a player like smif_n who understands that the best way to blitz is to make things as interesting as possible, as often as possible  .
And looking down the years, I see that my favorite blitz opponents have always been this way. Tim Krzywonos, Edmund Yiu, smif_n, Takeshi Murakami, Makoto Suekuni, and many others. It gives life pizzazz, don't it? |
