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[Empathy]

Hm, I distinguish between skill and strategy. One can have good skills (not make misplays on playing out a strategy) without picking the optimal strategy. Vice-versa, someone can make the better strategic decision, and just play it out badly.

I should probably specify what I mean by skill and strategy, because people will disagree.

To me, a strategy is choosing the engine, the general battle plan, the stuff you can decide on T1. This can include some mid-game scenarios and decisions that you plan ahead, depending on how familiar you are with the strategy. Typically for high level players, the most likely end-game situations should be clear in your mind.

Skill are decisions (mostly card play order, card options, buying priority and endgame) that occur during the game.


As for the winning strategy always being the one where you learn most, I just disagree.

[shark_bait]

As for the winning strategy always being the one where you learn most, I just disagree.

That's a fair opinion.  I guess I should elaborate a bit.  When I play, I always play what I view as the best strategy.  However, I am not always correct on this.  My learning comes when my "best" strategy is severely trounced by someone else's better strategy.  I then remember this and incorporate it into future games. 

After thought, I will concede that learning can happen by playing sub optimally.  If you're unfamiliar with how to build say a scrying pool or HOP engine, learning the skills to properly do this is important.  However, trying those types of things in the presence of other more lucrative options may mean that you can't successfully complete them or that the game will end before the fruits of your engine can come about.  In that way, sometimes it's better to just play the optimal strategy and employ the learning by doing philosophy when those types of boards present themselves.

That being said, if you want to learn how to play certain strategies, practice premade kingdoms either solitaire or with opponents until you're comfortable with how they work.

[WrathOfGlod]

Thx for the mention

I'd say that there are several skillsets which improve as you go up the ranks and separate players in the 25-40 range

1. Endgame play-This (as mentioned in the OP) is crucial and the difference between good and bad play at the end can easily be a 5-10% gap in results

2. Combo Evaluation-By the time you reach lvl 20 you should be familiar with most of the non-specific combos (ex. library+disappearing money is non-specific, library-festival is specific) however determining the board-specific speed of the combos is a crucial skill.
(University may be one of the hardest cards to evaluate in this respect

3. Game Discipline- This is something which keeps players like Geronimoo at the top, that they are more likely to reject the "cool" build and grind out the win, this is similar to 2. but different players are better at different aspects

4. Adaptation- As you go up the ranks dominion becomes more interactive and your opponent's deck becomes more and more relevant, determining when it is safe to green, when you should break PPR and how long you can delay your megaturn are all very dependent on your opponents composition.

[timchen]

I wonder how 40+ players (I consider myself still a 30+) feel about this. How much room do you feel there is for strategic improvement? What is the tradeoff between learning process and maximizing win conditions given available strategies?

I think I understand this trade off. It is not really a trade off however; it is just how comfortable you feel to try a strategy which you are not sure to be better. The short answer for me is just that, just try it, if you think it can win. A couple of losses in the short term can pay huge dividends in the long run. However, there is a fine line between trying something you can win
and some genuine bad play. Think it through before playing is really key.


There are a few interesting psychological aspects, though:
(1) facing a lower-ranked opponent, one might want to play a more familiar strategy. This probably maximize one's win probability. I feel this is actually lack of confidence though.
(2) facing an equal or higher ranked opponent, one might be lured into playing some new strategy and blame the loss to be due to "trial and erroring". Again, I found this is just an excuse. In a competitive match one should always play the strategy that he thinks is best; not some strategy that could give him excuses when he lost.

[Fabian]

Part of identifying when an unfamiliar strategy will be the strongest strategy on a given board is knowing it as well as possible. Part of learning a strategy is understanding how it works and trying it out a lot until you understand it better and can play it better and know how to build it better. Then, there's the flipside of not playing suboptimal strategies intentionally.

I feel there's definitely value in trying "weird" things once you reach a certain point. I've been making a conscious attempt at strengthening the engine building aspect of my game lately, as I've considered it to be relatively weaker than my BM/x type game, compared to the opposition. If this has given any real results is tough to say, but it certainly means I've been thinking harder on what makes a potential engine playable on a given board. I might have gone for a unnecessarily complicated deck a few times, but then I've learnt something, haven't I?

Contrary to what shark_bait is saying, I'm not happy with waiting for my opponents to beat me to see a stronger strategy, I want to find them myself.

[shark_bait]

Contrary to what shark_bait is saying, I'm not happy with waiting for my opponents to beat me to see a stronger strategy, I want to find them myself.

I don't recall saying that I was happy losing to better strategies. 

I have a strong dislike for losing. 

It's just when I do lose soundly, I remember why I lost and what I can do better in future games.  If I see a potential strategy that is new to me that I think is the best way to win, I'll go for it.  Sometimes this crashes and burns and other times it works great.  Either way, I'm better prepared for another game with a similar kingdom.

[Lekkit]

I don't see it as if shark_bait is saying that you should happily wait for your opponent to crush you with a better strategy. What I think is that you can learn a lot from seeing a monster of an engine your opponent has figured out. You can probably learn to master it a lot quicker. I mean, take MMM's article about the Apothecary/Native Village. I think it would've taken a long while before people started to figure that out by themselves, but now that he put it out there, people have been trying it out and tried to perfect it.

What I really mean is that even if it's nice and fulfilling to find your own combos, looking to learn from others is a great way of finding others.

[Fabian]

I can't tell if you guys are misinterpreting me on purpose or if I really did phrase it badly In any case, it seems pretty obvious to me that I'm not saying s_b is happy to lose to better strategies, but that s_b is happy to wait to learn new strategies until he loses to it, rather than finding them himself.

Basically, this: "My learning comes when my "best" strategy is severely trounced by someone else's better strategy.  I then remember this and incorporate it into future games."

[Lekkit]

Again, I don't think that's what he meant. What it basically boils down to is that you learn a lot from others.

[shark_bait]

@Fabian, I never meant to misinterpret anything you said.  I feel like I'm doing a poor job on phrasing my thoughts as well.  Basically, I'm not happy losing and I'm also not happy to just sit and play conservative and comfortable dominion.  I'll take a risk if I think I see something in a certain kingdom.  The point I was trying to make is that when you lose to someone with a clearly superior strategy, your learning will come at a rapid rate! 

[RisingJaguar]

In short, Fabian loves to learn from testing things out himself.  I'm guessing this leans more towards (but not limited to) solitaire games and simulator. 

S/B loves to learn from observation.  I'm guessing this leans more towards (but not limited to) when others beat him (similar and different strategies alike) and looking at game logs. 

Of course I'm sure both do learn from the other's learning tactics but their main learning methods are different.  The main takeaway is probably both of these are great ways to learn as I used both.