Eric Sink from Source Gear made a similar point in a 2005 (I'm so old) essay explaining competition and business topics to developers via sports/game metaphors:
"The thing I find most interesting about Ping Pong is that you can often win without doing anything fancy or aggressive. A lot of players think the way to win is to slam the ball really hard. The problem with this strategy is that a slam is a high-risk/high-reward shot. If you do it right, you almost certainly score a point when your opponent fails to return the ball. If you do it wrong, you give your opponent a point.
Modesty aside, I consider myself a "pretty good" Ping Pong player. I can slam the ball when necessary, but I hardly ever do. I can beat most other players by simply returning every shot with a little backspin. Hitting the ball hard simply isn't necessary. All I need to do is wait for the other player to make 21 mistakes.
How software is similar
You can beat a lot of competitors by simply not beating yourself. Most companies go out of business because of their own stupid mistakes, not because of the brilliance or strength of their competitor. Stay conservative, and stay in business. Watch the years go by, and you'll be surprised how many of your competitors come and go."
Very good metaphor. I score similarly in Rainbow 6 Siege, an online FPS game. On the level I play, the game can be very fast paced. Often I score simply because I'm more patient, not because I click more accurately or faster.
This is what professional poker players do, and if the goal is winning it works. It also changes what was originally a pleasurable social activity into a grinding job, which I don't want for things that I currently find fun, like ping pong.
Exactly. This is the reason at one point I stopped being invited to casual poker games with friends of friends. I was amateur level compared to professionals, but just because I don't make blunders, any game session 4 hours long were enough for me to systematically get most if not all of everyone else's money and ruin their fun.
This kind of play is boring in a friendly setting because you’re folding so damn often. That bothers me more than how often someone’s winning (and is why my friend group doesn’t play anymore—the guy most-interested in organizing games plays “correctly”, and it’s boring, so nobody wants to do it)
Anecdotally of course, but that was not my case at all (and I imagine for a lot of people). Counter-intuitively I guess, but I could see a lot more flops just because I would have a) a lot of correct readings by turn and b) easily exploit obviously bad EV plays by others, regardless if I won at showdown.
Folding a lot makes you a boring player, but getting involved a lot and "somehow" getting a lot of chips eventually makes you _dangerous_ at these friendly gathering and that's what gets you unwelcome (at play - I'm still friend with these people I'm talking about).
https://ericsink.com/articles/Game_Afoot.html
"The thing I find most interesting about Ping Pong is that you can often win without doing anything fancy or aggressive. A lot of players think the way to win is to slam the ball really hard. The problem with this strategy is that a slam is a high-risk/high-reward shot. If you do it right, you almost certainly score a point when your opponent fails to return the ball. If you do it wrong, you give your opponent a point.
Modesty aside, I consider myself a "pretty good" Ping Pong player. I can slam the ball when necessary, but I hardly ever do. I can beat most other players by simply returning every shot with a little backspin. Hitting the ball hard simply isn't necessary. All I need to do is wait for the other player to make 21 mistakes.
How software is similar
You can beat a lot of competitors by simply not beating yourself. Most companies go out of business because of their own stupid mistakes, not because of the brilliance or strength of their competitor. Stay conservative, and stay in business. Watch the years go by, and you'll be surprised how many of your competitors come and go."