here's another quote from later on:
"Consider a chess grandmaster playing at the highest level - a Garry Kasparov or a Bobby Fischer. Matched against weaker players, their game looks flawless. They play well; their opponent makes one slight mistake, then another. The opponent's game begins to deteriorate. All choices start to look awkward, then downright bad. Finally a blunder, and the game is over.
When two top players are matched against each other, the game is more interesting. The players make many fine moves, but with a few minor errors. Each tries to exploit the other's small mistakes. Tension is maintained for a long time as good moves alternate with small, almost imperceptible errors. Finally, perhaps under the pressure of the clock, one player makes an error that's too serious to overcome, and his opponent moves in for the kill. A masterpiece, cheer the critics.
In two-person games like chess, we tend to think of top players as winning because their grand conceptions just overwhelm the opponent. That can be true on occasion, but it's really a metaphor that obscures the main point. Games are about not making errors. If the sum of all your errors is less than the sum of all your opponent's errors, you win. Otherwise he wins."
harrington suggests that this is exactly the same in poker.
was reading harrington cash games and found an interesting comment.
harrington was speaking about playing the metagame in poker. for example, playing a weak hand strongly from a poor position in order to create a certain image of yourself to the other players at the table. you lose equity in that specific hand, but it creates a ripple effect that increases the equity in your future hands.
harrington then states, "Chess players will be familiar with this concept because in chess it happens frequently. Players make material sacrifices (often of a pawn, sometimes of a piece) in order to reap a reward of other assets later in the game (development, center control, attacking chances). But the central idea is the same: you sacrifice something concrete now for something larger and real but more intangible later."
is this a reasonable similarity between chess and poker?