It’s a common myth that the more you practise at games, the better you will get. New research, however, seems to show that there are some games that you will simply never be any good at, no matter how hard you try. This is not a health concern and does not have any kind of implication for your wellness, but in fact is a totally normal facet of human minds.
Two leading scientists, Professor Doyne Farmer at Oxford University and the Santa Fe Institute and Dr Tobias Galla at the University of Manchester did the study by running literally thousands of simulated two-player games, taking note of how decision making is affected by game playing.
The results were interesting. It was found that in the simpler games such as Noughts and Crosses, where you have far fewer moves and choices to make, you can quickly become good at it by guessing the optimal strategy, as there are limited options. The game then quickly becomes boring.
Playing a more difficult game, however, can negatively affect your wellbeing, as you may feel that you are slow or stupid, as you feel unable to comprehend the rules and become better at it. The research, however, showed that human brains are simply not designed to cope with more complex games with lots of moves, such as chess or some card games.
These results could even transcend the world of board games and have a knock-on effect on the world of finance. Trading on the stock market is sometimes similar to a game of strategy, but if it turns out that human behaviour is increasingly irrational as a game increases in complexity, financial predictions based on how people will act may be wildly inaccurate.
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