This is my first post on this blog in quite some time. If any subject would rustle my jimmies enough to get me to start writing again, this it it.
Few things are more annoying to me than when people think they have found an amazing "trick" that will allow them to succeed in a particular game, sport, or field of work while having far less knowledge and spending far less time practicing than everyone else. When it comes to games, this way of thinking is extremely common, and often rewarded by the imbalanced casual trash that most people play. It's far less common in sports, but definitely exists in my sport of choice. These strategies are commonly used because the ratio between power and ease of use is skewed; they are more powerful than they should be considering how easy they are to execute. The downside is that since the skill ceiling for them is low, they are purely "tricks" that rely on catching the opponent off guard, and will very rarely work against quality competition. These are usually known as "cheese," but the more technical label for them is "first order optimal strategies." I will provide examples of these and of objectively superior strategies in two subjects that are near and dear to me: gaming, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. But before I get into specific examples, I feel the need to clarify the difference between cheese and unorthodox strategies.
Unorthodox strategies may break what is generally considered a "rule" of good play in a game/sport, but they are not necessarily cheese. Sometimes, there is a high skill ceiling for an unorthodox strategy, and it could possibly work against a higher level of competition than cheese would. With that being said, these strategies still usually fail at the elite level. Cheese strategies often follow the rules, but don't even make it past the bottom tier because the skill ceiling is so low that player skill basically doesn't factor in. They will fail in the hands of experts just as often as they will for novices. The only factor that decides success or failure for cheese is the opponent's familiarity (or lack thereof) with it, and sometimes that isn't even enough. Many strategies often fail against standard play even while totally catching the opponent off guard.
Cheese is present in pretty much any multiplayer game you can think of. The best examples can be found in chess, the most balanced, studied, and competitively played game ever made. The metagame of chess has had hundreds of years to develop, and there are countless strategies, both standard and unorthodox, that have been studied in painful detail. Still, one of the pleasures of chess is that the metagame continues to deepen. On the other side of the coin, there are a few first order optimal strategies available to idiots who think they can watch a couple of Youtube videos and instantly master the game. The most common is the scholar's mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrUalgPaiPQ
This strategy is the epitome of cheese. It will work pretty often against inexperienced players, but is never seen being used effectively in high-level play. It's very simple and easy to prevent if the black player is familiar with it. White goes for an absurdly early checkmate by forgetting about establishing center control or safely developing pieces. When (not if) the attack fails against a quality opponent, white is behind on development and it is likely that the queen will be very vulnerable. This strategy simply has no depth to it. It is purely a trick, and there is no way to effectively transition from it when the shallow initial attack fails. A good example of a standard opening for white is the Ruy Lopez, also commonly referred to as the Spanish game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41rPFNY_CAY
This is about as standard and solid as it gets. The Ruy Lopez is used all the time at all levels, including by the very best in the world. White can be aggressive, but doesn't go all-in with a shallow early attack.
So what's the problem with using the scholar's mate? None, if you are okay with being bad. But if you would like to use your playing time efficiently and be as good as possible considering how much time you put into the game, a standard opening like the Ruy Lopez is the obvious choice. The scholar's mate will not make you better at chess, no matter how many times you play it. The Ruy Lopez definitely will make you better at chess, not just at that particular opening, because it forces you to play by the accepted "rules" of good chess and therefore will translate to overall improved play.
The "rules" of good play for any competitive game or sport exist for a reason. You WILL NOT find a way to ignore them and excel. If it were possible, someone much smarter than you who spends much more time studying and playing the game would have done it by now. But for the sake of argument, let's say that you truly believe you can change how the game is played entirely. Even if that is the case, you need to thoroughly understand the rules before you can begin to effectively break them. If you go in blind, you are almost guaranteed to accomplish nothing. It would require a potent mix of arrogance and stupidity to think that you are going to undo centuries of metagame development for chess within your lifetime. I am not saying that unorthodox strategies are as bad as cheese, but they're still really, really bad for the most part.
When it comes to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there can be more of a grey area than in chess. A fight happens in real time, and many variables must be considered (strength, speed, flexibility, circumstances of the fight, etc.). With that being said, there are definitely standard techniques and strategies that have been shown time and time again to work either in a street fight against an untrained opponent or in a match against world-class competition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW_btInPLl4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubdzhri2HQQ
Royce gracie dominated the early UFC tournaments with the same basic positional and submission attacks being used by top-level competitors today. If any doubt existed that the basics could still work in modern Jiu Jitsu or MMA competition against knowledgeable opponents, Kron and Roger Gracie eliminated that doubt. There are different standard styles of guard being played by high-level competitors, which I will go into detail about in a separate post. But nobody, NOT A SINGLE PERSON, has made it to the elite level of MMA or Jiu Jitsu competition using first order optimum strategies. I bet those of you reading this who are familiar with combat sports are trying to find an example to prove me wrong, but you won't find it. There are guys on the second or third tier winning with cheesy or unorthodox moves for sure, but it fails them when they try to make it work against truly elite competition. Many people who rely on cheese rarely compete, if ever, so some may think that a conclusion cannot be reached until more examples are available. But to think that there are people crushing everyone in their school with cheesy bullshit who just don't feel like competing even though they would win is laughable. If cheese could work in high-level competition, at least 1 person would have shown that by now.
First order optimal strategies are shit. Unorthodox strategies are marginally less shitty. You are not special; you are not going to outsmart the whole of a community that obsesses over a particular game or sport and find a way to reinvent the wheel while improving on it. I feel the need to repeat myself, especially for other members of my generation who may read this: YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. Rather than spending your time and energy being an arrogant douche with a compulsive need to be unique, you could spend your time and energy trying to actually be good.
