This interview with Victor Niederhoffer is worth reading in its entirely, but this sample on the case for making more squash errors gives you a flavor:
I’m interested in something you said in one of your e-mails, that it was a mistake to play a flawless squash game.
As a squash player, I was gifted. I had all the right things going for me. I practiced. I was very good with the racket, and I had tremendous anticipation. But I tended to play an errorless game by hitting a slice on my backhand, which took a lot of power off the ball. That wasn’t a disaster, but it was definitely a weakness in my game. My opponents always used to say that on a good day they could beat me, because they could hit more spectacular shots than me. But they never did. I went for about 10 years without losing a game, except to [the great Pakistani squash player] Sharif Kahn. He made about six, seven errors a game—but he also made eight or nine winners. I would make about zero errors per game but only one or two winners. He had the edge on me about 10-4, and I regret that I was never willing to accept the risky shots and confrontations, never willing to play a more error-full game.
More here. And, relatedly, the entire “Wrong” blog is catnip for those of you, like me, with congenital disconfirmation bias.
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