What works in chess does not necessarily generalize to swordfights. In a duel your responses to your opponent’s techniques are mostly cached actions carried out on reflex, and and any ideas you might have about how many times your opponent is likely to try any particular move are not likely to have that much influence on how you react.
How you set up the move certainly makes a difference, the same technique can be used in many different ways, but if you take a specific approach and your opponent defeats it once, you shouldn’t count on it working the next time, and if they defeat it twice, you should be even more confident it won’t work if you try it again.
From my experience as a fencer, I can affirm that facing a beginner can be disorienting, because when you train to respond to intelligent and efficient techniques, unintelligent and inefficient ones are just confusing. I’ve never known an experienced fencer to lose to a newbie, because when one person is using efficient techniques and the other isn’t, and both are unfamiliar with how to respond to their opponent, the efficient one will win, but it can be pretty frustrating.
On the other hand, having a newbie opponent try the same thing repeatedly even when it’s not working is one of the least troublesome things they’re likely to do.
What works in chess does not necessarily generalize to swordfights. In a duel your responses to your opponent’s techniques are mostly cached actions carried out on reflex,
Chess openings are largely cached among professionals.
I’ve never known an experienced fencer to lose to a newbie
Not in a ten-point bout. Very rarely in a five-point bout. I’ve seen it happen in one-point bouts, though.
Agreed on trying the same thing multiple times. Part of this is that fencing (whether epee fencing or the slower katana play that Musashi was talking about) is decided on the quarter-second level, a couple orders of magnitude below what you’d get even in speed chess, but I think informational effects are just as important in this case. A great deal of the metagame of martial arts depends on having the correct low-level reactions to your opponent’s moves, and working memory has a lot to do with this; trying the same thing twice will prime your opponent quite strongly to respond to it a third time, no matter how strong a fencer you are. (It’s possible to exploit this by trying a superficially similar move that’ll defeat the expected counter, or to feint a move you previously used and go to a second-intention attack.)
Not in a ten-point bout. Very rarely in a five-point bout. I’ve seen it happen in one-point bouts, though.
At my club, I don’t think anyone really fenced one-point bouts. Three rarely. The newbie would sometimes get points though, so if they had been fencing one point bouts, they would have had a chance. Five was the standard where I fenced, and I don’t remember seeing a newbie ever win one.
Five was the standard where I fenced, and I don’t remember seeing a newbie ever win one.
Anything else would have surprised me. Fencing would probably not have acquired its current status and reputation had it been so reliant on things other than training and skill.
Yes, I fully agree that things will work differently depending on the specific rules of the specific competition.
I’m mostly referring to questions of strategy and metagame. In terms of a specific type of strike in fencing, for instance, things have to become a bit more contrived for this to become applicable. Two really great fencers could, for instance, face off in a duel of mindgame meta, where one strikes twice in a manner that is unlikely to succeed, but is an attack on the pacing of the duel, attempting to take control of it, which the other will respond to.
On the third attempt of this technique, the opponent might anticipate a slight change in the technique, such as the strike turning into an actual attack, and prepare a more diverse set of reactions to counter how their opponent might avoid their default reaction (which they have now seen twice, and may have figured out a way to circumvent). Then, the game takes more depth, as both fencers become aware that there are more possible reactions, but that who takes control of the battle’s pacing will depend on the attacker’s anticipation of their opponents’ style and possible reactions.
As I said, very contrived, but I could plausibly see this happening in high-caliber duels, naturally occurring at the quarter-second level or faster, particularly for fencing from what I know.
What works in chess does not necessarily generalize to swordfights. In a duel your responses to your opponent’s techniques are mostly cached actions carried out on reflex, and and any ideas you might have about how many times your opponent is likely to try any particular move are not likely to have that much influence on how you react.
How you set up the move certainly makes a difference, the same technique can be used in many different ways, but if you take a specific approach and your opponent defeats it once, you shouldn’t count on it working the next time, and if they defeat it twice, you should be even more confident it won’t work if you try it again.
From my experience as a fencer, I can affirm that facing a beginner can be disorienting, because when you train to respond to intelligent and efficient techniques, unintelligent and inefficient ones are just confusing. I’ve never known an experienced fencer to lose to a newbie, because when one person is using efficient techniques and the other isn’t, and both are unfamiliar with how to respond to their opponent, the efficient one will win, but it can be pretty frustrating.
On the other hand, having a newbie opponent try the same thing repeatedly even when it’s not working is one of the least troublesome things they’re likely to do.
Chess openings are largely cached among professionals.
They’re usually not cached at the level where you have any chance at all of losing to a complete beginner.
Not in a ten-point bout. Very rarely in a five-point bout. I’ve seen it happen in one-point bouts, though.
Agreed on trying the same thing multiple times. Part of this is that fencing (whether epee fencing or the slower katana play that Musashi was talking about) is decided on the quarter-second level, a couple orders of magnitude below what you’d get even in speed chess, but I think informational effects are just as important in this case. A great deal of the metagame of martial arts depends on having the correct low-level reactions to your opponent’s moves, and working memory has a lot to do with this; trying the same thing twice will prime your opponent quite strongly to respond to it a third time, no matter how strong a fencer you are. (It’s possible to exploit this by trying a superficially similar move that’ll defeat the expected counter, or to feint a move you previously used and go to a second-intention attack.)
At my club, I don’t think anyone really fenced one-point bouts. Three rarely. The newbie would sometimes get points though, so if they had been fencing one point bouts, they would have had a chance. Five was the standard where I fenced, and I don’t remember seeing a newbie ever win one.
Anything else would have surprised me. Fencing would probably not have acquired its current status and reputation had it been so reliant on things other than training and skill.
Yes, I fully agree that things will work differently depending on the specific rules of the specific competition.
I’m mostly referring to questions of strategy and metagame. In terms of a specific type of strike in fencing, for instance, things have to become a bit more contrived for this to become applicable. Two really great fencers could, for instance, face off in a duel of mindgame meta, where one strikes twice in a manner that is unlikely to succeed, but is an attack on the pacing of the duel, attempting to take control of it, which the other will respond to.
On the third attempt of this technique, the opponent might anticipate a slight change in the technique, such as the strike turning into an actual attack, and prepare a more diverse set of reactions to counter how their opponent might avoid their default reaction (which they have now seen twice, and may have figured out a way to circumvent). Then, the game takes more depth, as both fencers become aware that there are more possible reactions, but that who takes control of the battle’s pacing will depend on the attacker’s anticipation of their opponents’ style and possible reactions.
As I said, very contrived, but I could plausibly see this happening in high-caliber duels, naturally occurring at the quarter-second level or faster, particularly for fencing from what I know.