The ladder of play has rungs, where each represents the player’s primary challenge at his current stage. The aim, of course, is to ascend the ladder.

1. The rules
2. The game
3. The competition

The rules

One is absorbing the rules, but hasn’t grokked the game and how it all fits together. He struggles to remember everything.

The game

One gets the rules, mostly. Now, he’s looking at the game itself and vetting his ideas about good play. He’s making solid connections and identifying efficiencies and common mistakes. He’s sifting what works from what doesn’t.

Some stall here—fail to get past it.

I use this illustration to remind players there’s a final rung—and in missing that last reach, one won’t win much.

The competition

One sees the full landscape now.

At this point, he’s looking outward toward his opponents. This includes guarding his own efforts while finding ways to frustrate theirs—to topple their castles, if he can. Good play guards and intrudes.

There’s nothing mean about it.

The ladder metaphor is sufficient for helping the average player find a general path to becoming a better player. The more critical aspect, however, is an understanding for cause and effect.

Cause and effect

Every game is a system. Not only that, but a system within systems.

The players who are drawing the most correlations between cause and effect are the best players. They are thinking about how things are connected and how doing one thing has a downstream impact on other things. This makes playing games a puzzle of deciding how best to value your opportunities, because you can’t pursue everything equally. Doing some of this, means doing less of that.

So you’re seeking a path. And deciding what to do, within the fabric of understanding the rules, how the game is scored, and what ends it.

I can tell some players are making lots of connections. These are the players whose moves are more likely to interfere with mine. I can tell, simply by observing moves, some players are not making as many connections. Their choices are a glimmer of what connections they’ve noticed and what they’re optimizing for. Thus, within my framework of understanding, I’m assessing the strength of their play.

This presumes I have a good handle on the game. If I only think I do, there’s a chance they’ve noticed or prioritized something I missed. They may have the better handle and be thinking that I am the one who suffers the lack.

This point is a game is not what moves you make. It’s the puzzle of why to make one move over another. It’s making weighted valuations and calculating the probabilities of executing the plans you’re beginning to form.

Thus, connections are everything. The game is a machine and each action the pulling of a certain lever or the pressing of a certain button. The thing is not everyone sees all the levers and buttons. Those with a simpler view of the machine have a simpler view of its causes and effects.

The game within the game is learning to draw connections for what makes the machine go, how it work, what makes it do this, or that. Form a richer framework of cause and effect and you’ll more likely outmaneuver the opposition.

Some games I naturally find and see the fullness of its framework. And, for some, I struggle to find it. It takes a while before I begin to see what makes it tick. In spite of it or, perhaps, because of it, there are many I still enjoy playing. Usually, it comes down to whether unraveling its framework feels more like fun than work. It’s the pleasure of discovery—the pursuit of mastery and not having achieved it—which is fun and keeps me coming back for more.