What TV SHOWS are you watching?

jason10mm wrote: I'd like to see actual examples of people who are masters of a game that translates into real world victory.

I'm not sure the two share one iota of the same skillset. I don't think Chess teaches anything useful for real life. I don't think any game really teaches much beyond the much larger points of "you get over a loss" and "there's always the next game."

In some ways they do make you think differently about personal relationships, but those are skills more easily learned in other venues.

I'm only a couple of episodes in, but as with all stories in the genre the lead character is kinda weird. Another trope closely followed in this one. I've enjoyed the two episodes but it sure would have been nice to see a well-adjusted smart person that does their homework be the protagonist. It's just not allowed. I think it puts off normal people.

Sagrilarus wrote: I'm not sure the two share one iota of the same skillset.

Then you'd be wrong. Political game theory (the science of analyzing how decisions are made in political and diplomatic scenarios) draws quite a bit from the strategy and history behind chess, backgammon, go, and other classic games. So do many business analysis models. Regular players of those games are trained in decision-making, long-term planning, short-term recoveries to unexpected scenarios, application of strategy, and on and on. They're actually quite useful and applicable to a number of modern circumstances.

I'm not much of a chess player, but it does offer a few lessons that are broadly applicable in life. And you can learn these lessons just from playing a little chess.

1. Learn to plan ahead. Too many people stumble blindly through life, living wholly in the moment without any thought to the future.

2. Make sacrifices to achieve goals. In chess, you might sacrifice a pawn in order to take out a bigger piece controlled by your opponent. In life, you might delay the start of your career by several years in order to get a college education that may eventually pay off with a higher-paying job.

3. Small decisions can have big consequences.

4. Even a pawn can become a queen.

Yeah, I'll be honest, those all sound like lessons better learned in other places and applied to Chess, not taken from it. But I suppose you have to start somewhere.

I think the only thing I've taken away from gaming is the social aspect of it, the detaching of in-game goals with the person across the table from you. That's been useful in a sales and marketing aspect, and at times the understanding of the broader picture of what defines the border of the game space has been enlightening.

I don't see how tactical play in Chess, or Go, or any of the other discrete-play games provides particularly useful insight to life's chaotic mess. I'd wager the trading in Settlers is more valuable.

I don't know about Chess specifically, but I do know that games can teach us a great deal about the concepts and application of strategy.

I've been surprised in life how many people lack any form of strategic thinking.

charlest wrote: I don't know about Chess specifically, but I do know that games can teach us a great deal about the concepts and application of strategy.

I've been surprised in life how many people lack any form of strategic thinking.

This is literally 80% of my work-life at the moment, trying to bring a strategic mindset to people who are operating completely within reactive bubbles and constantly screwing up as a result. Maybe I should buy them all chess sets.

I was more referring to an example like "President Gray played chess with Dictator Orange and, seeing how DO responded, was able to successfully bluff DO to withdraw from the contested islands" or " referring to his airborne troops as his 'knight' and his armored brigade as the 'rook', General Green maneuvered his forces to pin down the enemey and force their surrender".

Chess as a metaphor for clever tactical or strategic thinking is pretty pervasive in media (that nazi hunter show in Amazon for example) but I'm not really aware of any actual chess masters that had any direct influence on politics or warfare.

I certainly think some games can teach valuable life lessons, if only how to take the L with dignity and take the W with grace.

Having been raised in a poverty, hoarding mindset, having diagnosed ADHD and all that entails, I suck at strategic thinking. My wife does that for us. I am in my mid-fifties, in a career that by design can't go anywhere unless I go into soul crushing administration, and my job workload with a 4/4 teaching schedule (and my own lack of focus) often keep me from completing any side projects that might be useful. Besides, Bruce Gandolfini said that most chess players only loook at 4-5 moves into the future.

I did watch The Queen's Gambit and enjoyed it, then was crushed to discover it was entirely fictional. The magic of fiction.

Call My Agent is good escapist fare set in Paris. In some minor ways it reminds me of Halt and Catch Fire, the constant politics and manufactured crisis, but it is fun and you see a lot of Paris. Even with a profanity filter in place I picked up a lot of French swear words.

CranBerries wrote: I did watch The Queen's Gambit and enjoyed it, then was crushed to discover it was entirely fictional. The magic of fiction.

Note entirely (includes spoilers). See 11:16 mark:

I have finished A French Village. Plowed through it although seasons 6 & 7 are only six episodes each. Season 4 was the resistance and Germans leaving. Season 5 the executions and haircuts. Season 6 the trials of whomever is left. The show got a little too soapy at times but for me it still remained interesting for the first 6 seasons. Season 7 was full of flash-forwards to mainly I think the 70's and 00's. So you see the children grown up and get their opinions and see the last characters die of old age basically. As an ending season 7 was mostly just boring and sad. If I ever watch the show again I think I'd stop at 6.

"Every true story ends in death." -- Ernest Hemingway

But writers often realize that they don't need to end a story at that point, they can choose to stop sooner. Depends on how they want to stick the landing.

Finished season 1 of Stranger on Netflix. I started season 2. It's a very enjoyable show, even if it is sort of Law and Order: Korea. The main characters are likable, which goes a long way. It's also one large story, not something that is wrapped up in an hour.

Been watching Babylon Berlin, finally, as it's been in my Netflix queue forever. We're almost through the second season. I like it because I know a lot of the history and interwar Berlin was one of the more fascinating examples of society shifting from an old cultural order to a very new one and no one being quite sure of what was happening or how. I've really enjoyed Liv Lisa Fries as Charlotte and it's interesting to have a lead character in a largely police-oriented series in Gereon Rath, also be the most incompetent cop I've ever seen. Clearly, he has some massive issues that often impede his performance, but it's been kind of funny watching him get into various scenarios and accurately predict just how wrong they're going to go.

I think the writers, in their efforts to incorporate as much of that cultural change as possible, overdid it a bit, plot-wise, as it was kind of difficult to keep up with in a couple spots (Is this what non-reading Game of Thrones viewers felt like?), but that hasn't been a huge drawback.

Babylon Berlin — I’ve begun season three now and have enjoyed it.

Watching the second season of The Mandalorian and I think the first episode was written in a weekend by someone who just finished reading Dune.

Tatooine was originally billed as a backwater planet where a Jedi wouldn’t be found by the Empire. But as best I can tell it’s become the busiest place in the galaxy.

Need to go back to Babylon Berlin.