After discovering that there are, in effect, two different games and realizing that a generic strategy will not work for both games, Ramo devised a clever strategy by which ordinary players can win by losing less and letting the opponent defeat themselves.

If you choose to win at tennis – a...

Buffett used to convene a group of people called the “Buffett Group.” At one such meeting Benjamin Graham, Buffett’s mentor, gave them all a quiz.

“It was a true-false quiz,” Buffett said. “And there were all these guys who were very smart. He told us ahead of time that half were t...

In his 1975 essay, The Loser’s Game, Charles Ellis calls professional tennis a “Winner’s Game.” While there is some degree of skill and luck involved, the game is generally determined b...

Amateur tennis is an entirely different game. Not in how it is played or the rules but, rather, in how it’s won. Long and powerful rallies are generally a thing of the past. Mistakes are frequent. Balls are constantly hit into nets or out of bounds. Double faults are nearly as common as faults.

The point is that most of us are amateurs but we refuse to believe it.

This is a problem because we’re often playing the game of the professionals. What we should do in this case, when we’re the amateur, is to invert the problem

In expert tennis, about 80% of the points are won; in amateur tennis, about 80% of the points are lost. In other words, professional tennis is a Winner’s Game – the final outcome is determined by the activities of the winner – and amateur tennis is a Loser’s Game – the fi...

Professionals win points whereas amateurs lose them.

In a professional game, each player, nearly equal in skill, plays a nearly perfect game rallying back and forth until one player hits the ball just beyond the reach of his opponent. This is about positioning, control, spi...

Scientist and statistician Simon Ramo wrote a fascinating little book that few people have ever bothered to read: