posted 10-28-2000 02:54 AM               

Playing to win is the most important and most widely misunderstood concept in all of competitive games. The sad irony is that those who do not already understand the implications I’m about to spell out will probably not believe them to be true at all. In fact, if I were to send this article back in time to my earlier self, even I would not believe it. Apparently, these concepts are something one must come to learn through experience, though I hope at least some of you will take my word for it.

Introducing...the Scrub

In the world of Street Fighter competition, we have a word for players who aren’t good: “scrub.” Now, everyone begins as a scrub—it takes time to learn the game to get to a point where you know what you’re doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or “learn” the game, that one can become a top player. In reality, the “scrub” has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game before he’s chosen his character. He’s lost the game even before the decision of which game is to be played has been made. His problem? He does not play to win.

The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevent him from ever truly competing. These made up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. In Street Fighter, for example, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” So-called “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield which will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.

You’re not going to see a classic scrub throw his opponent 5 times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimize his chances of winning? Here we’ve encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you…that’s cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that’s cheap, too. We’ve covered that one. If you sit in block for 50 seconds doing no moves, that’s cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap.

Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is another great way to get called cheap. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can’t counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn’t I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. The game knows no rules of “honor” or of “cheapness.” The game only knows winning and losing.

A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which ones tries to win at all costs is “boring” or “not fun.” Let’s consider two groups of players: a group of good players and a group of scrubs. The scrubs will play “for fun” and not explore the extremities of the game. They won’t find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they’ll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite esoteric and difficult to discover. The counter tactic prevents the first player from doing the tactic, but the first player can then use a counter to the counter. The second player is now afraid to use his counter and he’s again vulnerable to the original overpowering tactic. (See my article on Yomi layer 3 for much more on that.)

Notice that the good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the “cheap stuff” and abused it. They know how to stop the cheap stuff. They know how to stop the other guy from stopping it so they can keep doing it. And as is quite common in competitive games, many new tactics will later be discovered that make the original cheap tactic look wholesome and fair. Often in fighting games, one character will have something so good it’s unfair. Fine, let him have that. As time goes on, it will be discovered that other characters have even more powerful and unfair tactics. Each player will attempt to steer the game in the direction of his own advantages, much how grandmaster chess players attempt to steer opponents into situations in which their opponents are weak.

Let’s return to the group of scrubs. They don’t know the first thing about all the depth I’ve been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more “fun.” Superficially, their argument does at least look true, since often their games will be more “wet and wild” than games between the experts, which are usually more controlled and refined. But any close examination will reveal that the experts are having a great deal of fun on a higher level than the scrub can even imagine. Throwing together some circus act of a win isn’t nearly as satisfying as reading your opponent’s mind to such a degree that you can counter his ever move, even his every counter.

Can you imagine what will happen when the two groups of players meet? The experts will absolutely destroy the scrubs with any number of tactics they’ve either never seen, or never been truly forced to counter. This is because the scrubs have not been playing the same game. The experts were playing the actual game while the scrubs were playing their own homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules.

The scrub has still more crutches. He talks a great deal about “skill” and how he has skill whereas other players—very much including the ones who beat him flat out—do not have skill. The confusion here is what “skill” actually is. In Street Fighter, scrubs often cling to combos as a measure of skill. A combo is sequence of moves that are unblockable if the first move hits. Combos can be very elaborate and very difficult to pull off. But single moves can also take “skill,” according to the scrub. The “dragon punch” or “uppercut” in Street Fighter is performed by holding the joystick toward the opponent, then down, then diagonally down and toward as the player presses a punch button. This movement must be completed within a fraction of a second, and though there is leeway, it must be executed fairly accurately. Ask any scrub and they will tell you that a dragon punch is a “skill move.” Just last week I played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with “no skill moves” while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him 5 times in a row asking, “is that all you know how to do? throw?” I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, “Play to win, not to do ‘difficult moves.’” This was a big moment in that scrub’s life. He could either write his losses off and continue living in his mental prison, or analyze why he lost, shed his rules, and reach the next level of play.

I’ve never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I’ve also never seen a prize for a player who played “in an innovative way.” Many scrubs have strong ties to “innovation.” They say “that guy didn’t do anything new, so he is no good.” Or “person x invented that technique and person y just stole it.” Well, person y might be 100 times better than person x, but that doesn’t seem to matter. When person y wins the tournament and person x is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person y has “no skill” of course.

Depth in Games

I’ve talked about how the expert player is not bound by rules of “honor” or “cheapness” and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning. When he plays against other such players, “game theory” emerges. If the game is a good one, it will become deeper and deeper and more strategic. Poorly designed games will become shallower and shallower. This is the difference between an arcade game that lasts years in an arcade versus one that lasts 4 months. This is the difference between a PC game that lasts years on the shelves (Starcraft) versus one that quickly becomes boring (I won’t name any names). The point is that if a game becomes “no fun” at high levels of play, then it’s the game’s fault, not the player’s. Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it’s poorly designed and you just losing because you’re a scrub kind of look alike. You’ll have to play some top players and do some soul searching to decide which is which. But if it really is the game’s fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren’t good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.

Boundaries of Playing to Win

There is a gray area here I feel I should point out. If an expert does anything he can to win, then does he exploit bugs in the game? The answer is a resounding yes…but not all bugs. There is a large class of bugs in video games that players don’t even view as bugs. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, for example, Iceman can launch his opponent into the air, follow him, do a few hits, then combo into his super move. During the super move he falls down below his opponent, so only about half of his super will connect. The Iceman player can use a trick, though. Just before doing the super, he can do another move, an icebeam, and cancel that move into the super. There’s a bug here which causes iceman to fall, during his super, at the much slower rate of his icebeam. The player actually cancels the icebeam as soon as possible—optimally as soon as 1/60th of a second after it begins. The whole point is to make iceman fall slower during his super so he gets more hits. Is it a bug? I’m sure it is. It looks like a programming oversight to me. Would an expert player use this? Of course.

The iceman example is relatively tame. In Street Fighter Alpha2, there’s a bug in which you can land the most powerful move in the game (a Custom Combo or “CC”) on the opponent, even when he should be able to block it. A bug? Yes. Does it help you win? Yes. This technique became the dominant tactic of the game. The gameplay evolved around this, play went on, new strategies were developed. Those who cried cheap were simply left behind to play their own homemade version of the game with made-up rules. The one we all played had unblockable CCs, and it went on to be a great game.

But there is a limit. There is a point when the bug becomes too much. In tournaments, bugs that turn the game off, or freeze it indefinitely, or remove one of the characters from the playfield permanently are banned. Bugs so extreme that they stop gameplay are considered unfair even by non-scrubs. As are techniques that can only be performed on, say, the one player side of the game. There are a few esoteric tricks in various fighting games that are side dependant—that can’t be performed on the 2nd player side, for example.

Here’s an example of the grayest area of all. Many versions of Street Fighter have “secret characters” that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good, sometimes they’re not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game, as in Marvel vs. Capcom. Big deal. That’s the way that game is. Live with it. But the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character was Super Turbo Street Fighter with its untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don’t mean it’s a tough match—I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is “broken” in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn’t designed to handle. He’s miles above the other characters, and is therefore banned in all tournaments. But every game has a “best character” and those characters are never banned. They’re just part of the game…except in Super Turbo. It’s extreme examples like this that even amongst the top players, and even something that isn’t a bug, but was put in on purpose by the game designers, the community as a whole has unanimously decided to make the rule: “don’t play Akuma in serious matches.”

My Attitude and Adenosine Triphosphate

I’ve been talking down to the scrub a lot in this article. I’d like to say for the record that I’m not calling the scrub stupid. I’m not saying he can never improve. I am saying that he’s naïve and that he’ll be trapped in scrubdom, whether he realizes it or not, as long as he chooses to live in the mental construct of rules he himself constructed. Is it harsh to call scrubs naïve? After all, the vast majority of the world is scrubs. I’d say by the definition I’ve classified 99.9% of the world’s population as scrubs. Seriously. All that means is that 99.9% of the world doesn’t know what it’s like to play competitive games on a high level. It means that they are naïve of these concepts. I really have no trouble saying that since we’re talking about esoteric, experience-driven knowledge here. I also know that 99.9% of the world (including me) doesn’t know how the citric acid cycle and cellular respiration create 38 ATP molecules per cycle. It’s an esoteric thing of which I am unaware, just as many are unaware of competitive games.

In the end, playing to win ends up accomplishing much more than just winning. Playing to win is how one improves. Continuous self-improvement is what all of this is really about, anyway. I submit that ultimate goal of the “playing to win” mindset is ironically not just to win…but to improve. So practice, improve, play with discipline, and play to win.

posted 12-07-2001 04:54 PM               

I did say that 99.9 percent of the world is totally ingornat of the concepts of high level competitive play. So...are you disagreeing with that? You can't seriously think otherwise. I mentioned it not for my own ego, but to just put things in perspective. I mean, 99.9% of the world is ignorant of a lot of things I could name. I'm sure I'm ignorant of at least 99.9% of all things there are to know. I was trying to acknowledge that most people who read that article probably won't already have an intimate understanding of the subject.

It's interesting that you seem to fall into some of the traps specifically mentioned in the article. But I'll go over it again.

Let's say there is a "super tactic" like a zergling rush on a small map in Starcraft. Let's say we just discovered it and it seems unbeatable. You can easily beat me with it every time. You and I might think it's "too cheap" to do, while other, better players practice it relentlessly and perfect it. Those players are the ones who will find the counter. They are the ones who might discover that there is some OTHER super tactic that is even better than the zergling rush. They will reach the next level of play.

But what about you and me? We have discovered what we believe to be the obvious, best action to take. But we won't take it. How about the second best action? I guess that would be waiting 10 seconds then zergling rushing. Can I do that? Can I wait 20 seconds? Can I wait 30 seconds? You're going to run into these types of ridiculous questions all the time whenever you decide to label things as "cheap". In most cases, the so-called cheap tactic turns out to be not even that great compared to other more nasty stuff that gets discovered.

One thing I don't understand is getting mad at a player who plays to win. If the best way to win really is some single unstoppable move, then the GAME is the problem. The player's play style is only a consequence of the incentive structure in the game design. Again, ususally the "super tactic" turns out not be so super at all, but if it really IS the thing that breaks the game...then the game isn't very good is it? Now we're back to the whole mess of "can I sort of do the tactic? Can I do it once a game? Twice? Can I do half of the tactic?"

If the GAME is really that bad, then go play another, better game. Not all games degenerate down to one tactic at high levels.

Another point you bring up is the concept of playing for fun somehow meaning not playing hard. I have fun when I play as hard as I can against and opponent who plays as hard as he can, and we have a close game. That's fun. Another thing that's fun is self-improvement. I dont' want to play a weak opponent (or a strong one!) who plays with one hand behind his back, just to be nice. I won't learn from that. Maybe if I know absolutely nothing about a given game, but I'm assuming we're above that level. I want the opponent to play his very hardest, which will force me to improve. If I get crushed, as I often do, I will know a few things not to do anymore. Hopefully I learned a few good things to do from him. How fun is it to play with training wheels forever and not experience what the game really has to offer? And to never truely improve....

I'm not sure what you're referring to about me thinking a dragon punch is hard. Like you say, it's just like any other move.

I can't speak to instant kills in GGX, but maybe my friend tragic can. You around tragic?

posted 12-07-2001 05:13 PM               

In the new Guilty Gear (GGX, DC, PS2, ARCADE), the instant kills have a startup charge that you must do before you even attempt the move, you lose life for being in the charged state, you can't combo them, you can't hit people during reeling state (knockback, knockdown, like I said... can't combo them), and they can be blocked. Also, they only kill one life bar, not two (like before).

Probably why GGX is player at high levels, unlike the first.

Maybe this is off topic, but GGX is great =).

posted 12-08-2001 05:40 PM               

You define a scrub as someone who isn't good at a game. I'm sure I suck at Street Fighter. 2D fighters have never been my bag. Therefore I am, in your mind as well as mine, a scrub. You state later, however, that a scrub doesn't "know the first thing about all the depth I’ve been talking about." I was a gamer long before I played video games. It took only a short while for me to understand that playing a video game against another human was no different than playing chess against one on a mental level. I'm sure that there are many "scrubs" who realize this. Just because someone is a scrub doesn't mean they are ignorant. I know, you made that point at the end, but based solely on your original definition of a scrub, I think you're being way too harsh.

You also hammer the point that playing to win is the only way to play. Sometimes, playing to win and playing for fun come into conflict. I would have no fun at all beating someone by doing the same thing over and over. I do agree, however, that exploiting these ubermoves forces others to improve their game. I'm also sure I would use whatever means necessary to win in a tournament. I don't always play just to win, and it hasn't made me a worse player (or kept me from improving) as far as I know. I have lost matches by refusing to go for (what I consider to be) "cheap" wins. I've also lost because I wanted to win with style, at least in my eyes. Maybe I'm still 100% scrubby because sometimes I play with the secondary motive of impressing others, but if I can 1)win, 2)look good doing it, and 3) have fun, have I lost anything? Drop number 1 (which most of the time loses number 2), and if I'm still having fun, have I lost anything?

Examples:
My roommate and I played Virtua Fighter 1 & 2 on my Saturn. We got to the point where we could almost call the outcome of any match. Playing purely competitively became less than fun. We started to screw around more when we played. We set rules about what was "cheap" and what was not. We had our own form of "honor". Did we, at any point, lose sight of what the game truly was? Did we become scrubs? Hell no. It made the game more of a challenge AND more fun. Was the game at fault because we had to manufacture an additional set of rules? I doubt it.

I guess the whole point of this meandering pile of bullshit I've created is that you seem to draw a line that I don't think exists for many of us: You're either playing solely, utterly, and completely to win or you're not really playing. I'm sure you aren't speaking in absolutes, but it comes across that way. I'd bet that's what set Mr. Crap off. I don't know, maybe I am a scrub, and that's why this topic set me off.

posted 12-09-2001 03:07 PM               

All right, one more time. In most cases, when you think you have an unstoppable strategy, it isn't even remotely unstoppable. I just wanted to point that out before answering your zergling rush situation. But fine, let's assume it's totally unstoppable. Very simple situation. The game is broken. Players would not take it seriously, there would soon be no tournaments, and it would fade away. In the specific case of Starcraft, there are lots of maps to play. The most common include Hunters, Lost Temple, and other maps that don't have 1/10 the problems of Blood Bath. So most players would (and do) choose not to play on a broken map. As far as I know, tournaments don't usually include Blood Bath either.

If the entire game suffered from the unbeatable zergling rush (not just one map), then yes, it would be a bad game. A company like Blizzard would probably not let this happen, and if they did, they would surely issue a patch. A lesser company would probably see their online play dwindle and die.

I really have no idea what this whole dragon punch issue is about. I do not think of a dragon punch differently than any other move. You don't think of it differently than any other move. We seem to be in agreement on that point.

Now we come to Magneto in MvC2. He's an ironic example. Yes, he can do ridiculous things after just getting one good hit on you. Yes, he can kill you from one good hit. So can Juggernaut's glitched headcrush. You see much of that in tournament play? So can storm's standard combo into lighting super, DHC into Sentinel super into corner combo. So can tron assist into Felicia super into Hulk's Gamma crush. And of course, so can 3 or 4 air Hyper Viper Beams from Cable. There are a zillion ways to do 100% in that game. The question is how easily can you pull them off.

Surely, of those examples, the easiest one is Cable (well, storm too). And true, it's very easy to land that first hit with Magneto that should--in theory--lead to 100%. But in practice, it's hard to get the 100% combo. As we saw at the B5 international MvC2 tournament, even the best players in the world can't land it every time. They can land it sometimes, and they can very often land a high damaging combo. This explains why Magneto is good and popular. It explains why 2 of the 4 players in the final 4 of the winner's bracket used him, but he's not the ultimate last word on MvC2.

Notice that 2 of the final 4 DIDN'T use him. Why? Because Storm is really good, too. So is Sentinel. So is Spiral. So is Blackheart. Blackheart's even good AGAINST Magneto.

MvC2 is a very tricky game to analyze since there is soooo much BS in it. It really helped teach me the concept of "unstoppable thing A still isn't as good as unstoppable thing B". So if you can land high damaging Magneto combos, then you better go for them. You better play as hard as you can and excecute the combo perfectly during every opening. Because the screen is going to be full of Spiral knives knocking you away, commando assist's, cammy assists, blackheart demons, sentinel traps, doom traps, and a hundred other things that give Magneto problems.

The irony is that Magneto may very well be the best character, but not because he has one thing (huge combo) he can do over and over. It's because he has a SO MANY things he can do. So many different tricks with air dashing, attacking high low, resetting combo for more damage. You just never know what's going to come out of him.

I invite you to come to the next big tournament, by the way. Check out www.shoryuken.com for a list of many upcoming tournaments. Unfortunately, you won't find anything for Project Justice, which perhaps supports you own points of pointing out its flaws.

posted 12-09-2001 06:14 PM               

Thanks for the civil tone.

Looks like you did catch me in some inconsistency with my definition of scrub. At one point I said it was just another word for being bad at a game, which is common slang. But elsewhere I say that a scrub is someone who is trapped in his own made-up prison of rules. Clearly, the two concepts are (obviously) different since someone could understand one competitive game well (you said you play chess) and be a "scrub" at a new game only in the sense of not being good at it...yet. But the "scrub" I was talking about would never get good at anything until he...graduates.

You also mention you playing your friend in VF1 and VF2 on Saturn and that you made up some rules of honor to play by. Without these rules, I assume you are saying that one of you would beat the other really badly and that wouldn't be fun. If you are only talking about playing this one particular guy, and if your skill levels are radically different, then sure...make up some rules. If one of you is really that bad, then it's hard to learn by being beaten instantly.

But in the more general sense, I am (perhaps falsely) assuming that one has access to and will play against many different opponents, either via the internet or an arcade or whatever. In this case, you can basically disregard all players of significantly lower skill than you. Sure, you can give them tips, help them out, help them learn, but you really need to find people to challenge you, right?

Here's the point I keep coming back to. In the situation above where you have access to many opponents, it's just really unlikely that your supposed super tactic is really all you think it is. If it were, then you could win any tournament with it. Maybe your specific friend isn't good enough to beat it, but the community of gamers out there almost certainly can. Any they probably already know all about it and have their own, better super tactics. So while you and your friend are having fun playing what's basically a different game (since you have different rules than everyone else), the gaming community will probably get to the next level play and leave you behind.

Also, all of this is partially my personal preferences being different than most other people. To me the MOST fun a game can be is when both players are insanely good at it. So in order to have more fun at a game, I have to get better and better at it...which means playing to win. Not everyone shares that idea with me (but I bet those who don't haven't felt how fun high level play is!)

That reminds me...you said you play chess. What if you played book openings and your friend didn't know them, resulting in you almost always winning. You could say "no book openings" but how much does that really help you improve your game come tournament time?

Also, you are right when you say this is not as absolute as I make it out to be. It's just hard for me to make a point without going all the way with it.

posted 12-09-2001 09:55 PM               

I just don't know what to say anymore, sspecially after you calling B5 a "newbie MvC2 tournament." Go to http://www.shoryuken.com/b5/dvd/ and buy the DVD. There were like 350 people from around the world, including the best players from Japan. The top finishers were very deserving of their titles. And as good as the Captain Commando assist is...I think only 1 of the top 4 used it.

Is MvC2 broken? It's a weird game. It's not some game that is "balanced to a science." It's a game where almost every character is broken in some way. About 10 characters have the most broken stuff, at roughly the same brokenness level. You could take any one of those characters and say "this game is broken because I can just do Tactic X with this character and win." But when there are 10 or 15 such characters that can be combined in teams of 3...lockdown patterns, rushdown characters, assists all day...there are many different viable options. I really hate to say this but...it is kind of "balanced" given that my definition of balance is that high level play supports a large number of viable options.

Also, the Street Fighter community is all to familiar with the theory of the "random guy from Idaho" or whatever who played agaisnt his 3 friends and thinks he is the best, if only he could afford to go to a touranment or whatever. In virtually every case, said boastful player gets beat down, because only once he's played against the other best players (beyond his few local friends) will he get to the next level. Often, he has the potential to win the big national tournament, he just needs more experience against against the "pros".

Perhaps some Marvel master from #capcom will chime in here?

posted 12-09-2001 10:08 PM               

In regards to the rules we made for VF, it went kind of like this: We played so much against each other that we knew who was going to win 75+% of the time just by who was using which character. The only time it was even money was his Kage against my Jacky. For instance, as Wolf, I could ring him out almost at will. We decided (unanimously) that ring outs weren't fun at all so we set the stage to the largest size. This made the game more enjoyable for us both. Things were different when I went to the arcade. The one thing I always tried to do though was play just above the skill of anyone below me. Sometimes I misjudged and lost as a result, but it was better in my mind than killing some newbie and having him walk away from the game, never to return. (I made exceptions for jerks though. I always play my best against them.)

As for chess, It's been a looooooooong time since I've played, and the few "tournaments" I attended consisted of playing against kids from a few other high schools. I was taught by my dad, who is better than I am, but I had no formal instruction in the game at all. I know a couple classic openings, but that's it. If the ONLY way I win is book openings when playing a friend who doesn't know them, then am I getting better? I would think that forcing myself to rely on my own openings would improve my game. Not sure though; like I said, I can play the game, but I don't know the game. Scrubby all over.

One thing I agree with (absolutely!) is that a game is at its most fun when both players are incredibly good at it. To take it a step further, though, I always have fun when playing someone at the same level. The most fun I have ever had at a game in my whole life was playing classic Quake Expert CTF on a particular server where the regulars were roughly equal in skill. 8 players on each team, neither able to maintain a permanent hold on the other (except on certain maps that gave a true advantage. We all knew what they were, but dammit, we tried anyway!).

I know that I tend toward the absolute when making a point, as you stated you sometimes do. As for playing to win though, I always like to keep in mind that it's no fun having your ass handed to you. I don't expect anyone to handicap themselves for me, but if I think it makes the game more fun, I don't have a problem doing it.

posted 12-09-2001 10:53 PM               

Are some techniques "cheap?" It depends on your definition of "cheap." After all, mastery of a game requires that you understand the ways in which it is broken.

We used to compensate by setting house rules, limiting some strategies that we felt were unbalanced.