Pattern recognition

You may be getting fed up with my constant comparisons between poker and chess, but bear with me, because I'm about to make another one :-) Both poker and chess richly reward pattern recognition. When you can recognize a situation you've been in before, you'll know what to do; just as importantly, you'll know what not to do.

Come to think of it, many things richly reward pattern recognition. Software engineering is another example. Debugging a program is largely an exercise in remembering why things didn't work, and figuring out whether the same conditions could be occurring again. I feel quite lucky that I ended up as a software engineer; it certainly wasn't a career I was considering while in college.

Let's put all the cards on the table and just state plainly that life itself rewards pattern recognition! Life is a fractal, and rewards pattern recognition at every magnification level.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, I had another losing session last night. My rating is now the lowest it has ever been. However, I'm not discouraged in the least. I know what to do now. I predict my rating will begin a slow but inexorable increase soon.

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monvieux: 1311 (368-309-16 (693))