[ShaneP]

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Sorry, can't help myself...if I was a 'theorist in the field' of zoology, I wouldn't necessarily know anything about trees. Now, if I were a botanist...

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My ex-girlfriend, a theorist in the field of zoology, is fond of the fact that balsa is a hardwood and talks of it often. Also, apparently, whelks have the largest penis-to-body ratio of any animal. Point is, when you can see the other guy knows what he's talking about, as jeff does, then mere pedantry loses arguments.

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Yeah, that's fine...if you want to ignore the body of the argument and focus on what was more or less a joke, ok. But that wasn't the point at all. I could care less about hardwood versus softwood...I probably shouldn't have even said that, because (I know that was being a bit nittish) people would latch onto that rather than the actual argument...oh well, I was just trying to bring a slight amount of humor

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The 'body' of your argument is that you like terms to be used precisely and to not shift in meaning (as all good language does) when no one here was confused anyway. You are arguing to an empty room. Jeff's point that the amount of information in chess increases with ability, and thus the best strategy not only changes but relies on a completely different underlying theory, has interesting implications. If you can find the link to curtains' turn in The Well, he hints at exploitative chess strategies being a new avenue for him. And he's a pro. So, it's interesting. No one was talking about whether poker is a game of skill, but if you must be precise then I suggest that exploitation takes more 'skill' than does the application of a theoretically 'optimal' strategy, and poker is more skillful than high-level chess. Which is, like your argument, pointless semantic marshland.

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Not quite an empty room; there have been replies. And I would say it's interesting a game of perfect information can have room for 'non-optimal' strategies being better than the optimal replies based on one's opponent.

But the argument jeff put forward, if your summary is correct, is wrong. There's more information if I'm good at chess? hardly. I can see the board, I can see the pieces, I know how they move. All the information is readily available to any participant. Pieces are not revealed to a GM when they remain hidden from someone of my chess ability. I think the only 'pointless marshland' is the place where people define words however they want, and use them to prove whatever it is they want.

Although, my guess is there's a mixing of information (the state) with the action space for a game. What my opponent is doing or thinking in no way influences the information in a game as far as calling it complete or incomplete. It is a part of the game, and it would influence my strategies, but calling it something it isn't defeats the purpose of defining what it is in the first place. A good language may have words shift meaning, but good science has concrete definitions that are not subject to the whims of the person uttering the words. And the phrase 'incomplete information' is and was being used in a scientific sense, quite incorrectly--and I've seen jeffnc use it in that way several times in previous threads...