opponents – Pertinent Observations

Archery tournament design

Over the last couple of days, I switched on the TV in order to “jinx” two of India’s more promising archers in their respective games at the Olympics. On Monday evening, I switched on the TV to see R Banerjee (forget his first name) lose a close game in the round of 32. Yesterday, I watched Tarundeep Rai shoot well but still get well beaten by an absolutely in-form guy named Kim (from Korea, where else?). As I watched these matches, I was thinking about the nature of competition in archery.

Archery is a fundamentally single-player event. You are competing against yourself, and how well you do is not supposed to be affected by how well someone else does. There is no direct opponent you are playing against who tries to prevent you from scoring. In some ways, you can consider it to be similar to running. The only element of competition is the pressure that is exerted upon you be opponents competing simultaneously. In this context, it is indeed surprising that the archery event has been designed as a one-on-one knockout, like you would expect for a direct-opposition sport like tennis.

An event directly comparable to archery in terms of fundamentals is shooting – there again, there is no impact of one player on another’s performance but for the pressure exerted by means of simultaneous competition. Shooting, however, goes the “races” (running/swimming) way by means of having heats where only one’s absolute performance matters in terms of score matters (there is no limit on the number of the number of finalists from one heat; the best 8 or 10 participants across heats make it).

Then why is it that archery, which is fundamentally similar to these sports in terms of fundamental concepts, relies on head-to-head competition, and that too with no repechage? Yesterday, I watched Tarundeep Rai come up against an absolutely inspired Kim – Kim was in such imperious form that irrespective of how well Rai would have done he wouldn’t have qualified. Rai didn’t play badly, “against” any other opponent or on another day, he would have definitely done better. In a “direct combat” sport (such as tennis), one can point to the luck of the draw and similar matters. But in a distinctly non-combative sport such as archery why should artificial tournament standards be designed and that extra bit of luck be introduced?

I hope the archery administrators realize the stupidity of the curent format and move to one that is similar to what we see in shooting today.

What Should Mexico Do?

If Mexico and Uruguay draw their last league game, then both of them go through to the second round irrespective of what France and South Africa do. However, on account of a better goal difference, Uruguay will qualify as group winners and face the second-placed team from Group B, while Mexico will qualify second and meet the Group B winners, likely to be Argentina.

Uruguay’s option is clear. Play for a draw. If Mexico go for a win, Uruguay should just sit back and try hit back on the counterattack (and in terms of players and style, they are very well equipped for that). Simple case of getting men behind the ball and putting gaaji.

Mexico’s strategy is not so straightforward. The “greedy” thing to do would be to play for a draw, in which case they will most likely end up facing Argentina in the second round (if you remember, Mexico went out last World Cup by losing to Argentina at the same stage). On the other hand, if Mexico beat Uruguay, they will top Group A and meet a potentially inferior team (Korea or Greece) in the second round.

As mentioned earlier, if Mexico go for a win, Uruguay will simply defend and play a counterattacking game which they are good at, so I don’t know if they are going to go for it.

Thinking about it, it comes down to Mexico’s payoff function. I’m sure their payoff is an increasing function of how far they progress in the tournament. However, we should be able to identify one particular “jump” in payoff – some kind of a discontinuity, where the payoff increases considerably for one additional round of progress in the tournament.

If this “jump” is for the second round, Mexico can afford to put Ranatunga Principle, get a peaceful draw against Uruguay and claim their “jump reward”.

If the “jump” is for the quarter-finals, however, then Mexico will want to take the risk at this round in order to get themselves easier opponents in the round of 16 (I’m assuming here that Mexico consider Korea or Greece as much easier opponents than Argentina).

If the “jump” occurs further down in the tournament, I think there is way too much randomness about their potential quarterfinal opponents (especially given the fuzzy results in Groups C and D) and opponents as hard as (or harder than ) Argentina cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, they would rather face one tough opponent than two (and I’m assuming here that no team is significantly “harder” for Mexico than Argentina) and so they should put fight to avoid Argentina and thus go for a win.

Considering that they have reached the Round of 16 with reasonable regularity in the last few World Cups, I presume that their “payoff jump” will occur later in the tournament. And based on the above reasoning that means they should go for a win against Uruguay, so that they can try avoid Argentina.

And it is on this thin thread that the French are hanging their hopes (though first they need to thulp South Africa, no easy task).

Compensation Etc.

For a change I’m keeping up a promise that I’ve made on my blog – I’m actually writing a follow-up post that I’d promised. In the past, I’ve guilty several times of promising to continue something in a follow-up post and then conveniently forgetting about it.

So I had mentioned in my last post that the word “compensation” as used to describe salary is not really misplaced. There has been a lot of debate on this topic. The opponents of the word have said that you aren’t losing an arm or a leg in order to be “compensated”. They say that you are only getting paid for the value you add, and so the use of the word “compensation” is plain wrong. I must admit I haven’t really bothered to read the arguments of the people who support the use of the word.

The basic fact: you work because you need the cash flow to fund the rest of your life.

I know a lot of career-minded folks among you will jump on me for this, but I stand by this. Just get down a little deeper, and ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. Maybe you don’t get the kind of questions in your head that I normally do, and described in my previous post. Maybe your jobs have put you in the kind of comfort zone where you don’t really need to ask yourself such questions (I was in a similar state not too long back, I must admit). But I encourage you to make that effort and ask yourself this uncomfortable question. And it will be down to the money.

You might say that you are doing some stuff “for the sake of career development”. Rephrase that and you will find that you are doing that in expectation of higher future earnnigs. You might say that you are doing something because you want to “achieve something”. Dig deeper and you may find that you define the fruit of your achievement in monetary terms.

So where does “quality of work”, “impact on society”, “value add”, etc. all fit in? I know that in the not-so-distant past, I’ve also talked a lot about these things. I have rejected a number of potential job offers because I don’t like the “quality of work”. This definitely needs to be incorporated into the model, right?

The next basic fact: work is inherently unpleasant.

I don’t think I’ll spend too much time elaborating this here. Maybe I’ll explain this in the comments if you want. So this is where things like “quality of work”, “value add” etc. all fit in – they make work so much less unpleasant. For example, I enjoy spreadsheet modeling. So if my work involves a lot of spreadsheet modeling, I’ll feel so much less unpleasant doing it. Of course, what I am doing remains “work” and it has to be done, in a certain way by a certain day, and so it remains unpleasant. But the fact that I enjoy the core activity makes it less unpleasant.

Similarly, if you think that the work that you are doing gives you a sense of achievement, then it is as if you are doing a part of the work for yourself, and not for someone else, and thus need to be compensated less. “Compensated less”. So this is where it fits in. You get “compensated” because work is inherently unpleasant. You need some incentive to do the stuff that is inherently unpleasant. So you get compensated.

You may have to live in a city that is not your preferred choice – you need to get compensated for that. You may face an extremely long commute where you waste your time – you need to get compensated for that. You might have to work long hours which can intrude on your personal time – you need to get compensated for that. You may have to deal with lousy colleagues or customers, you need to get compensated for that. The list goes on. And if you think about it, a large part of the money that you get out of your work is just that – compensation. Compensation for your time, your effort, your mindspace, your willpower, etc.

So why work at all, you might ask. Go to basic fact one. You work because you need the money. You are in a certain job because you believe that after compensating for all your “sacrifices” for the job, it will leave you with some more money to fund your life. If you think that the money your job leaves you if you take out the “compensation” part of it is lower than what you need to sustain life, you need to question why you are doing that job.

Investment bankers (the inside the wall type) usually end up spending a lot of their time at work, and despite the reasonable bonuses they get, they might feel they are not being compensated enough. They are doing it because they expect that when they ultimately get promoted they will make enough and more to cover for all this unpleasantness. It is basically an “investment”. If, however, you think you are in a job where you are inadequately compensated but don’t see any hopes of significantly higher compensation in the future, you are cheating yourself by not looking for another job.

This also explains why it is a bad thing to compare your salary with your peers and your old classmates and then feel good or bad about it. No two people have the same needs. No two people find the same things unpleasant to the same degree. No two people make the same trade-offs. Comparing your salary with you peer gives little information.

On a closing note (I know it’s already monstrously long) I find the phrase “work-life balance” amusing. I think it is a construct brought about by the pigs so as to con the sheep into workign harder for them. There is no “balance” between life and work. Life is the master and work is the slave.