This reminds me of the kind of min-maxing good chess players tend to do when coming up with moves. They come up with a few good moves, then consider the strongest responses the opponent could make, branching out into a tree. To keep the size of the tree manageable, they only consider the best moves they can think of. A common beginner mistake is to play a move that looks good, as long as you assume the opponent “plays along”. (Like, threaten a piece and then assume the opponent won’t do anything to remove the threat.) I think this could be called strawmanning your opponent. If you steelman your opponent, you tend to play better, because your beliefs about the effectiveness of your moves will be more accurate. But you should of course also be sharpening your beliefs about which moves the opponent is likely to make, which involves thinking about your possible responses, etc.
This reminds me of the kind of min-maxing good chess players tend to do when coming up with moves. They come up with a few good moves, then consider the strongest responses the opponent could make, branching out into a tree. To keep the size of the tree manageable, they only consider the best moves they can think of. A common beginner mistake is to play a move that looks good, as long as you assume the opponent “plays along”. (Like, threaten a piece and then assume the opponent won’t do anything to remove the threat.) I think this could be called strawmanning your opponent. If you steelman your opponent, you tend to play better, because your beliefs about the effectiveness of your moves will be more accurate. But you should of course also be sharpening your beliefs about which moves the opponent is likely to make, which involves thinking about your possible responses, etc.