The Hardest Easy Game
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 3 ноя 2019
- Play The L-Game: hwwmath.looiwenli.com/l-game
Edward de Bono is a lot of things -- an author, an economic theorist, a physician -- but he’s also a thinker about… thinking. His 1967 book “The Five-Day Course in Thinking” included a game that’s one of the hardest in the world, yet also one of the simplest.
The idea behind creating the perfectly simple, perfectly impossible exercise that turned into The L-Game was to distill a 2-player experience down to a constant churn of critical strategic decisions. By limiting the board to just 16 spaces with 2 L-shaped tetrominoes and 2 neutral pieces, the board can’t distract from the core task. And with so few rules -- really, just that you need to move your L piece to an open space and then optionally move one of the neutrals -- the focus is purely on thinking several moves in advance.
That level of abstraction is way, way harder than it seems. But by using experience to identify and organize some strategic guiding principles to moving in the L-Game, it’s possible for both players to play perfectly -- and forever.
As de Bono demonstrates in his course, that’s the same sort of approach we apply to almost everything we value. We think strategically about the groceries we buy, the relationships we have or want… if it matters, we employ some form of strategy. And the better we are at strategic thinking, the more likely we are to get the result we need.
And it all starts with a 4x4 board, two tetrominoes, and a couple pennies.
** SOURCES **
"The L Game: Strategic Thinking". The Five-Day Course in Thinking by Edward de Bono: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...
"Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays, Vol. 2," by By Elwyn R. Berlekamp, John H. Conway, and Richard K. Guy: www.amazon.com/Winning-Ways-Y...
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/ @tommocarroll
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
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#education #vsauce2
Just some clarification about only having 3 possible moves in the A, B, and C scenario -- yes, there’s also a fourth move (the L down the left side from the top corner), but it just mirrors the situation we have in A and B. By simply reflecting the L vertically, we open ourselves up to another immediate loss as orange places a horizontal L on the second row and kills our chance to make another move.
Also, in move B, de Bono assumed that we would notice that Player 1 also moved the neutral piece from the top toward the bottom (since it can go in any of the open spots), which opens up a spot for Player 2 to go down the right half of the board. The neutral piece can’t be moved by orange *before* the L is moved, so that neutral piece had to have been moved by pink after Player 1 moved their L.
Thanks for diving deep into these details -- and showing what strategic thinking is all about.
P.S. -- Whether or not I put my pants back on for the rest of the video is up to you to decide.
he didn't have his pants on i guess
The breeze is gonna hit you in the nuts if you don't put that antibacterial silver tx2 fabric pants back on
take the L
but according to the rules, or what i understood, is that you could move the coin after you moved the L piece. And the coins seems like half the game. In your 'possible moves' you didn't move the coin at all, which would balance your enemie's possibilities..
@@kyden1329 Yeah you can open up a whole ton of possibilities further than those he listed. I don't know if I'm just misunderstanding something or if he really did miss some options. For instance if you flipped your piece into the unlisted 4th possible move and then moved the lower neutral coin into any position on the board then you can extend the game out at least one more move. I don't know why he left out the options that would extend the game. I also don't get why in situation B pink would intentionally move the neutral piece into a position that would cause him to lose the game and at the same time not show positions in A that would have pink move the neutral piece into an advantageous position. There is just a whole bunch wrong with those scenarios
So he did most of the video not wearing any pants?
How can you heart this comment and not reply?! :P
Tell us kevin TELL US
He just showed some pants while talking about the sponsor
@@demerion fair enough. there, i did it XD
Does he need to?
This just seems like a simpler version of chess and a more complicated version of tic tac toe
I think it's more like both + tetris
@@zythex4385 You guys have the exact same profile picture but with a different letter
@@tcg1_qc shh
@@ream1622 no, why would you do that?
@@zythex4385 Because swapping accounts to reply to your own comment is laaaame.
This actually seems like a fun game
Now I just need friends to play it with
Same
Me three
damnit
That's....... The hardest part
No strategic principles works with that one
Beating the AI in this game was a lot more cathartic than what I thought and had a lot more of me flipping the bird at the thing that I would had imagine.
I can't stop thinking about why his left side is red and his right blue
THREE FRICKIN D
Todoroki
5upernova ah yes I see you are a (preferred pronoun) of culture as well
Maybe to give us a seizure
Choose the left side or right side of Vsauce. Like those pills in The Matrix.
1:50 my calculator when I try to divide by 0
Hahaahhahahahahahahahzaha
ROFL
7 0 7
@Z-Games Pro i liked it
@@andreabarone4964 hey dude you ruined it
2:38 That would of been the best oppertunity to say "L-swhere"
damn this comment needs more attention
V-sauce: *tries to show the pants*
V-sauce: lemme take it off real quick
V-sauce: *literally sitting on a chair without pants*
When? I missed that moment
Show the timestamp
That's weird, this is the second comment on this video I've seen regarding whether he's wearing pants or not after taking them off, but he never took them off?
@@KoyasuNoBara there is a comment saying that the video is 12 minutes 52 seconds long, but actually it is shorter. I feel like the pants section is gone for some reason
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that Lightning McQueen blew a 3 lap lead in the piston cup
If the cows are laying down the fish ain’t bitin I won’t. Comments like these make me remember everything.
Or the 1,7 sec pit stop by Guido
oh
He did what In his cup?
He actually blew a 1 lap lead
"the hardest easy game"
My brain: aight imma head out....
grammar is out of here too
ketsu ] Easiest*
@@danielabay8872 lol sry
@@ZeroSleap well then... I guess its back
Actually...it's the Hardest easy game there's a difference...
4:36 counter-move b is an impossible move as in order for orange to play it they'd need to move the neutral piece before playing which is against the rules
Guess you didn't read the pinned comment before writing this? :-)
Most of this video applies to all deterministic perfect information games, like chess, go, checkers, nine mens morris, tafl, connect 4 etc. (Although some of them can't go on forever). What makes this game special is that it strikes the balance where it's not obvious how to play correctly, but you can master it in a couple of days, where the other games can take a lifetime to master.
"Avoid L's and manifest W"
But of course, no Luigi more Waluigi
I can imagine waluigi say that
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Wahhh
Wal-elegy
Luigi Fredo
so what ur telling me is it’s tetris, chess, and tic tac toe combined?!
edit: 1000 likes i’ve always wondered what it took to be cool
ye
You have 69 likes
Well yes,but actually no,actually yes,
no its not
Chesstris Tac Toe
I was recently at a camp for the disabled and I played this with my cabin mate, we had lots of fun playing such a simple game, though we changed the rules so the penny could only move to open spaces connected to eachother and not boxed off areas
played against the AI, won first try, never playing again so i can convince myself i'm a prodigy
I'm trying to figure out how people are playing an on paper game with AI...
@@sylver369 Just click the first link in the description
agreed
"You can't place them at an angle to win!"
*Places them at an angle to turn his L into a W*
*buzzer!*
@Mantra Mahajan *he ended up scrambling this sentence.*
actually i'm a cat tyvm
@Mantra Mahajan hm
I thought I was the easiest game.
Everyone plays me.
F
F
F
F
F
I bought this about 30 years ago. My mathematics students loved playing this.
oof
I like the fatal weak neutral & strong mindset.
It really reflects how "just being reliable enough" can have you win through a competitor's mistake.
Rarely need to play the risk because just not exposing yourself is already on the winning side.
Only when both sides are in the skill level of not losing through mistakes, strong moves even start to matter.
Man i love that.
Thanks for reading.
The idea is: On an even playing field of experience, if you spend time only learning neutrals of playing it safe, you only need to focus on 1/3 rd of the game but win 99.5% of the time, constantly beating opponents who will make mistakes.
Because the winning move is a ~1/200 chance for someone to unknowingly play to then develop into an unbeatable turn order.
Only when both players mastered "not losing by mistake", the winning move even matters to learn because only then, weak moves are a guaranteed loss and only neutral moves eventually lose by chance (expecting a true neutral game to go on for a long time until one plays a winner by chance.
(See chess, where low elosconstantly make mistakes and expose themselves, better elo ending in more draws and high elo confidently going for high risk moves, sacrificing high value pieces.
Makes sense?
More of a metaphor on how focusing on not making mistakes can put you ahead of ~99%
Lmk if i'm completely wrong there
Nobody:
Kevin: hey wanna play some B O N E L E S S C H E S S
Ukato Farticus yes please
B O N E L E S S P I Z Z A
🅱️ O N E L E S S
700th like
nah man, I wanna play 🅱️ O N E L E S S M O N O P O L Y
“This game takes 5 days to master”
Oh yea? Watch me do it in 12 minutes & 52 seconds
Mastered it in about 5 minutes, with a 2 move win
Speed runner?
@@jadenjohnson8389 nah, just good with AI abuse
@@crimzonshooter gotta be honest i just did random stuff and won in 15 secs with 2 moves lmao
# lakewood20 lol
3:14 there are 4 possible moves. The forth being a simple left-right mirror
5:10 My guess:
Nestle your L against Orange’s long end, and move the corner neutral one space inward.
You will control half the board, the opponent’s L will be forced to flip, and Orange will have 3 edges along the side-a more vulnerable position as shown before. But I don’t know how they’d move the coins.
Little known fact -
Kevin sleeps with his SnapBack on. It never leaves his head not even to shower.
Taking the top stop for weirdest never-nude variant.
Sorry, but Snapback staying on during s*x
Sam Samovich wait, even better
Kevin: sorry babe but the SnapBack staying on my head when it’s sexy time
when this game first came out in the early 1960's, I had one...and I came across it in my backgammon game. It was always one of my favorite games.
I just played it for the first time, and came up with a simpler way to play it, and possibly even guarantee an infinite draw.
Every corner square gets a score of 0. Every outside square that isn't a corner gets a score of 1. Every inside square gets a score of 2. Maximize your score with every move, then think about what neutral piece move would take away your opponent's highest score position, while not allowing him a higher score position by moving said neutral piece.
How do you make the pieces.
new rule: if you win its required to say “take the L”
The game is 3 rounds total, the player who loses takes one of the L's, and puts it on their forehead. There are only two L's in the game and at the 3rd loss, the winning player just does the "Take The L" on them.
No if u lose u have to take the l
@Zoie Pogoreski i think is a joke
Vsauce2 out of context:
GET THESE PANTS now back to our game
Timestamp?
1:44 my secret strategy to always win at battleship
I specifically have a hard time with these spatial tests. This was the part of my IQ test that brought my score way down lol
3:34 don’t you mean,
“you can’t go anywhere... Ls?”
okay bye now
Lol
"The possibilities here are endless"
No they're not. You said yourself, there's only 2296 possible board states ;)
Which funny enough makes this game ridiculously easy to solve even for humans. We can easily memorize 2296 positions and just play perfect every time.
@@Figgy20000 I'm a little hazy about whether that number is before, or after, taking various reflection and rotation symmetries into a account - but you're probably right, yes.
smh vsouce 2 i biased
@@Figgy20000 Most people won't memorize that many moves because it would take a lot of time. You'd better just play it a lot and get a feel for it. You'd end up categorizing the moves intuitively.
I'd personnally just write an AI for it.
Either specific to the game that just memorize for me all the positions. Or based on reinforcement learning, a method that would, by playing a lot, come up with an evaluation function that tells how strong a move is. This last one is my obsession of the last few month.
@@Ceelvain Rubix Cubers and top Chess GMs have easily memorized more positions than actually exist in this entire game.
If someone were to throw a million dollar prize pool at this thing next Saturday I'd bet you we'd have at least 50 100% perfect human players entering that same weekend.
1:22 1 year later i still dont know if that was an intentional double meaning
Of lose and play the l game
Man you are the best don't you DARE stop ☺️
Teacher: The test is easy.
THE TEST:
It's supposed to be the easiest game possible
The test: Make a strategy that is guaranteed to win the L Game
The simplest game
Michael: Or is it?
Hey, Micheal, Vsauce here.
This is Kevin
@@goshawk6153 Or is he?
Kevin...
sriram n or do you?
legit thought at 0:40 I started to hear the daredevil intro (on Netflix)
This brings whole new meaning to "Taking an L" when someone loses.
Damn, didn’t know Tetris was THAT hard.
Giorno killed polpo, shouldn't you be dead
Black Sabbath I mean
Wes Guyer
You can’t kill a shadow dude
@@DTheAustralian well you can kill the user so the shadow dude dies
how'd you master typing upside down? is it possible to learn this power?
Me: loses
My friend: do it
Me: but-
My friend: take the L.
Me:*eats my piece*
Lol jk, I dont have friends.
Same
They had us in the first half not gonna lie
You may not have friends.
But you have a FRIEND :)
👍
You can't lose if you don't have friends
Thanks for this cool game, Vivec!
4:53 option “B” is incorrect you cannot make that move without removing neutral piece first.
The lighting makes him look like he got painted in red and blue
Jack Howard -
I was thinking that the whole way through.
Nah, it's just his facepaint making the lighting look weird.
I cant unsee it
the lighting makes him look like Nerd City
Who told you he isn't painted in red and blue?
“Let me just take off my pants” -Kevin 2019
can you please stop with the quoting, it's a bit annoying. Just saying
Very funny
Nobody:
Las Vegas:
British people: :O
@@JQ3B94 yep... exactly
This is an insightful description of the beautiful chaos in chess and life.
Yo I’d never seen any of your videos before and I’ve just walked out even more of a nerd than I used to be. Thanks
Playing...
Kevin:
Me: Nevermind, it's my turn now
no
"You can't take forever. You have to make a move." A certain skeleton with a hoodie and single glowing eye would like to have a word with you.
Undertale fandom is everywhere... and I'm part of it!
BTW nice joke, I can *see* you are a Mann/Frau of culture like me.
well you gotta save some time to sleep
Sans couldn't take/wait forever either, eventually the player would outsmart the game, unless the game itself is meant to be endless, but there are many limiting factors to an indefinite game
No matter what video i click I cant run away from the undertale I mean i am not complaining XD
Heh.
3:47 i need to know the name of this song
Bro I opened this video while seshing just for fun, and damn boy this is is opened my eyes. My life makes sense now.
The more i look at his face, the more it looks like red and blue facepaint. I know it's lighting but, it messes with me
I knew "take the L" was going to be said at some point in this video
I love your lighting
4:08 The Battle Nations soundtrack, nice!
Seems so outta place and it threw me off when I heard it. Haven't heard that in years. Got smacked with nostalgia.
0:14 Me looking at the food at home when mom doesn’t want to take me to McDonald’s.
😂
its funny cause its so relatable!
LMFAOO
also, me when realizing your generation is doomed, zoomers couldn't survive a day in the forest like your forefathers had to or alone for that matter
@@warGasmshit
ok boomer
5:29 Counter-move B is invalid according to the rule that you can't move the neutral piece before the L-piece move is completed.
Yep, I noticed that while it was in scene as well...
It is valid. The pink player flipped his piece and then moved the neutral piece from 1x3 to 3x1. Then the orange player puts his orange piece to where the neutral piece was. That's also the only move where the pink player moved the neutral piece for some reason.
So he is saying that its the pink player that moved the coin?
The pink player does his move in "my possible moves"
(I think)
@@pasijutaulietuviuesas9174 Pink did not move the neutral piece, look again. The finalized board after Pink's move, which was just an L-flip, shows no movement of the neutral piece. Unless Kevin made an error in setting it up, but either way it wouldn't make sense for pink to move the neutral to (3,1) anyway, it wouldn't benefit them. It's one of the fatal moves they could make.
Thanks!
This game brings a whole new meaning to "hold this L''
Your videos are brilliant Kevin, I hope that it’s providing a good life for you and your family.
Thx bro
5:34
The B position isn't even possible because for that you'll have to move the neutral spot first and then make the move.
That is ILLEGAL
What no
I was about to write the same thing XD
What no
What no (can we make a chain?)
@@meherinmouly What no we can't make a chain.
That *W* at the end, p e r f e c t i o n
My brain recognizes, deconstructs, analyzes and predicts patterns constantly, this game is like a rubiks cube in my mind. I'm gonna play.
When is the anime of the L game coming out
8:13 Everybody gangsta until Kevin gets a Perfect Clear in Tetris
Not to mention all those L-spins he was doing
tf is a perfect clear?
@@jimothyjimothy1 when you clear your entire stack; in this case it was with a tetris too.
@@jimothyjimothy1 Exactly what Stanley Dodds said, plus the reference just came to me since a standard Tetris board is 10 tiles wide, if that helps clear things up!
In modern tetris games, There is a cycle which gives you every piece every 7 pieces. Players used this to make up "starter setups". There also is a "perfect clear setup", which gives you a not guaranteed, but high chance to get a perfect clear withing the first 10 (11 with the "hold" option) tetriminos.
“What you like to eat?”
“Y O U R S O N”
Kevin: "You can't take forever. You gotta make a move."
Great advice. Easier said than done though.
Them: calculating every movment , possible out com-
Me who has been starving for 5 days: *alright* *mate,* *take* *your* *time*
Me who has memorized all 2296 positions: Yeah this game isn't so "impossible"
@@Figgy20000 but it does train your brain
Kevin used to be my least favourite Vsauce ( no offense ) but these days it's by far the best Vsauce!
Outside it’s bc it’s actually posts
Also I love him :3
D!NG*
i love vsauce 1 and 3 but i'm to poor for youtube red
Well, Michael's stuff been paywalled until recently, and once you notice Jake's pausing every sentence, he's hard to listen to, so....
@@linuxstreamer8910 It's all free until the end of the year
Nobody:
Not even a single soul:
Vsauce2's next video: How tetris links with the creation of the universe
The most incredible thing for me in this video was learning the word halves o.O
So nobody is talking about the weird lighting on his face that looks like face paint.
I think has face paint for his face and the lighting for his arms
Is no one gonna talk about how the L game doesn't work on android:(
It is nintendo switch
@@volt7958 f#
@Zoie Pogoreski but the colors move as he moves around
2:59 see how the lights switch as he furrows his eye brows and returns after. The blue is on his right and the red is on his left.
In the end as he explains the importance of planning ahead and making those Ls Ws, the W turns purple in the lights.
Pretty sure this was planned for specifically that moment
0:59 me opening my "homework" folder
?
How does this have anything to do with storing the y'know in a normal looking folder
wait i dont remember commenting this on this exact video
Good job
Title: "The Hardest Easy Game"
Me: *VISIBLE CONFUSION*
Nobody:
Not a soul:
*Knight*
Tccoydgyfdjdkdrjydfjdcfykcfycfukcutcugkcgocougcugkckygckgycugocky&ykfccfyjcfkycgkycfkyc ITS A KNIGHT
@@christovac nah
@@christovac nope
Ostroth not in chess lol
*knight
Wait, I've had the L game as a board game for 10 years, ever since I was 5 years old!
Tuyệt quá, giọng Phúc ấm áp quá
I watched this after my tetris addiction stage.. guess what I immediately thought of. Falling blocks.
Question: will tetris players be better at this game?
3:20
I can't move my L piece
My whole life is an L
F
Wtf this is actually an amazing game! Why isn’t it more popular?
Wow!! I did not know this!!
7:25 we
like
squares
see yall in 6 years when this is in everybody's recommended
commenting to see if it really happened
Yo same here also commenting to see if it'll happen.
I'm a believer
7 months
@@vortexjax3865 dude joe just got em bad..
When I get my midterms back:
“It’s game over.”
really nice
It's actually quite interesting how much this just emphasises the 'control the centre square' philosophy of game shows! I would assume that the principle behind play is 'if you keep your L in the middle, you cannot lose - if you place your penny in the wrong spot, you can be moved out of the middle, so it requires TWO mistakes by player one to lose'.
Vsauce: You have a dad and a mom right?
Vsauce: WRONG
He isn’t wrong
"I'm just going to take of my pants..."
-Vsauce2, 2019
Off*
Off*
my 5 attepmts and answer to win is: you need to occupy 3 of 4 central areas, 1 coin mist be an the end of shortest leg of L and second coin an the back of middle part of longest leg of L
the starting point for the L's looks like dude perfect
It’s incredibly satisfying to me that the tetrominoes are colored properly according to the way they’re colored in tetris.
Isn't the other L blue?
ferre feys yes
Me: sees it one shade to dark
Also me: “pic of link cooking meal for Gordon Ramsay”
"This game is super hard to master."
Chess master: "Wanna bet?"
No
Let's not
thanks, my teacher didn't saw that game recearch coming
It’s be interesting to see meruem play this
This just sounds like a really simple chess. Trap their L(king), strategize how each move will affect the next, and you have to think in advance
I am Human
Chess but easier.
chess but every rule is different
Chess but in tetris..
I’ve shown you to my teacher and she’s now obssesed with your channel :D
Awesome 😮
My first time playing it just now, against the ai linked, I won in just 2 moves. I definitely "get" the goal. Time to bring my friends into this.