
Counterintuitive economics of a chess tournament - rkrzr
http://www.davidsmerdon.com/?p=1757
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dkbrk
I'm not sure that it makes a difference in this case, but it is insufficient
in situations such as these to look at just the expected return. A rational
agent's actions are determined by _expected utility_ , which could be highly
non-linear depending on myriad factors such as the player's net worth. i.e. it
could be rational to trade a lower chance of the largest payoff for a more
consistent payoff of a lesser but still substantial amount, even at the cost
of a significantly smaller expected return.

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sweezyjeezy
See the St Petersburg paradox for a good example of this.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox)

Another example that we all participate in is insurance. We all make an
expected loss on insurance, but we lower the variance of our outgoings by
doing it, so most of us are happy to take the hit.

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rm999
This stuck out to me:

> Even under some very tolerant assumptions, the expected payoff from playing
> on, for either player, was greater than the expected payoff from accepting
> the repetition.

Payoff, sure. But it's well-known that the marginal utility of money is not
linear, which means people tend to value money differently based on how much
of it they have (poor people value a dollar more than rich people). This
indirectly means some level of risk aversion is actually an optimal choice.
Turning down a gamble, even if the expected payout is positive, can be
rational.

This is well studied in economic theory:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenster...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem#Automatic_consideration_of_risk_aversion)

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nerd_stuff
Without invoking the maximization of utility we could use game theory and ask
if the players were simply minimizing their maximum regret. It was during the
qualification rounds, not the finals. It looks like they each preferred taking
an advantage or a draw (chosen by their opponent) over playing against a
world-class player at a slight disadvantage.

Nakamura's shown that he'll play interesting and sometimes dubious moves
because he wants chess to be more entertaining for spectators. He spends a lot
of time playing online against weaker players so they can have the memory of
that one time they played against one of the best. He's done so much for chess
and its popularity that if he takes an early draw once in a while he gets the
benefit of the doubt.

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pjungwir
A few thoughts:

\- They say this is terrible for television, but I bet they love it! I wasn't
aware of this tournament until this story. TV tries its best to manufacture
strife and drama.

\- In Go you simply aren't allowed to repeat a position (ko). I wonder how
profoundly it would change chess if you simply weren't allowed threefold
repetition. Or if you weren't allowed it within the first x moves?

\- What if a draw earned you 0.4 points instead of 0.5? Maybe that doesn't
matter with so few games, or does it?

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sanderjd
I've always found it interesting that that's basically how most soccer games
work, except that a draw is worth 1/3 instead of your proposed 2/5.

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TorKlingberg
Could someone provide some context? Had Nakamura and McShane already played
each other, and the second game looked like it was going to become an exact
copy?

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komaromy
This was their first meeting. The line that Nakamura would have had to play to
avoid the repetition was one that McShane had won a smooth victory in earlier
in the tournament, so he was leery of going into it.

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lazyant
This is why Linares tournament was so successful; the organizer wouldn't put
up with these quick draws.

