macrocephalopod

Been thinking about "easy mode" games a bit. In some competitive fields there is a period before many have figured out how to play, where people even doing really basic analysis can win big with little effort.

Most people in 2012 didn't realize that you can forecast elections quite accurately by aggregating lots of small polls together and doing a big Monte Carlo simulation. Pundits and talking heads got much more respect than quant models.

Nate Silver was able to build a reputation as a genius election forecaster by doing relatively simple analysis that most people weren't doing. He was playing on "easy mode". Now that kind of analysis is table stakes.

There was an interview with @mgnr_io on @choffstein's podcast where he talked about playing an Australian lottery where the numbers weren't random, but were based on soccer matches. If you looked up the odds beforehand you could play the lottery on "easy mode" with a big edge.

Playing on easy mode isn't a bad thing! If you're trading, you want to find as many easy mode games as possible, because that's much simpler and more profitable than trying to get an edge in a very competitive game.