A French Scrabble champion who doesn't speak French
People's confusion about whether being too methodical about winning the game is against the game spirit are missing that games, especially spectator sports, have conflicting goals.<p>As a player, your goal is to win the game, period. But for everyone else, including spectators and the whole support industry that is built around the game, it doesn't matter who wins. It matters only that the crowd is entertained. A player being too good makes the game boring, and so it is discouraged.<p>You can see this dynamic more or less clearly in pretty much every sport (F-1 being a notable example). The rules of the game are so constructed as to "level the playing field", to mostly eliminate any kind of advantage a player may bring to the field - like better tech or supplements. The crowd needs to see fierce competition, where everything depends on the talent of players. But then again it can't be too obviously random. If people feel they can't predict the result, they won't enjoy it. Doesn't matter if the game is inherently random or not; it only needs to not look like it. Then there's danger. Safe sports are boring, but actual accidents will detract people from enjoying the show, so again you need to create a sense of imminent danger while minimizing any real chance of a problem.<p>I mentioned F-1, because it's a notable example of a sport where all rules are constantly adjusted to ensure that you can't win by having better tech.<p>Personally, I hate this whole showbusiness and the engineering of enjoyment. I would appreciate a game with rules set up so people would be free to develop better strategies and better tech in order to dominate.