Brilliance of heads-up games

Let a game be heads-up if it consists of exactly two clashing parties, resulting in a single winner or a tie, and can be simulated repetitively in a way such that the probability of each team winning is equal. More simply, a two-team fair game, game with parity, or coin flip.

Playing a lot of a heads-up game, like a racket sport, fencing, chess, Clash Royale, or a 5v5 first-person shooter, teaches you how to lose, because that's what you're doing a good amount of the time. However, seemingly negligible differences in your losing frequency can speak volumes. A 49% win rate and 51% win rate are very different but feel the same, so as you progress, you'll often think you're close to the next skill class when in reality you're worlds away. This false sense of being almost there is actually a super power. You gain an unwavering drive to push through, like you're hiking the last 100 ft of elevation of a mountain every 100 ft.

Now suppose you found a way to frame every single endeavor you pursue in a heads-up way. It's quantitative, rational, exhilirating, and relatively optimal for improvement. However, it often proves tricky to parse this massive game of life, and that is why, separate from being skilled at heads-up games, the ability to well-define the sub-game you're playing is essential and where the largest skillgap lies.

I can't say I know much about minting the coin, because to some extent I've always looked down upon the non-nature of gamifying. It's very on brand with quantity over quality, a data-driven world, generative AI, Adam Grant's taker, and Saruman's Isengard[0]. I couldn't be content with completely giving up on seeking the "new" and embracing the unknown to live in a utilitarily favorable but feelingless approximation of the truth.

But fear of losing the answer in your mathematical attempt to capture it is poison. Fear of failure is poison. Trying anything is progress over standing still... probably. Find the heads-up game and play it.

[0] The company Palantir Technologies was named after Saruman's crystal ball that he used to oversee and communicate with others. I noticed the word "palantir" can be rearranged to "tarpalin", short for a tarpaulin or tarp, the item often used while camping to protect your things & you from bad weather—an all-encompassing cover. Tarps keep you dry when it rains if and only if they're set up properly; though regardless of weather severity and setup quality, the tarp itself will remain unscathed. Giving an indestructible entity the key to everything seems to have queued us for a utopian/dystopian coin flip. The question is whether the coin is fair.