Facts. This reminds me of an old article about playing to win: https://robertheaton.com/2014/11/03/why-you-should-read-playing-to-win-by-david-sirlin/ " In common parlance, “a scrub” is anyone who is just not very good at something. Playing to Win refines this definition to a specific kind of player who is [b]both bad, but also systematically incapable of ever recognising why they are so bad[/b]. [i]In reality, the ‘scrub’ has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game even before deciding which game to play. His problem? He does not play to win. [/i] A scrub does not really know why he is playing the game. [b]This leads him to construct “an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevents him from ever truly competing.” X tactic is ‘cheap’, Y strategy is ‘boring’, Z move is ‘really cool’.[/b] None of these have any impact on whether or not you win. As Sirlin recognises on page 1, playing “for fun” is an entirely legitimate thing to do, but it is orthogonal to the business of actually winning. A lack of clarity around his motivations can lead the scrub to believe they are playing to win, but actually playing for some amorphous, undefined cross between winning and obeying their own, personal set of fabricated rules. [b]Sirlin observes that scrubs usually try to solve their problems by trying to bend the world to match their rules, rather than bending their rules to match the world. If a scrub believes a particular move to be “cheap” and therefore outlawed by her internal rulebook, she will moan that it should be banned from the actual game too.[/b] The alternative approach of examining how to counter the move and the hidden depths that its existence creates crosses her mind, but is quickly rejected. Since other players will invariably ignore the scrubs rules, the rulebook has to manifest itself as some kind of secondary “Code of Honour”. [b]In the scrub’s mind, in order for him to lose he must not only be beaten according to the actual rules of the game, but by someone who also obeys their Code of Honour. [/b] "