Would Have

Dan and Stacy play chess. Dan is very good at chess; Stacy is pretty mediocre, but thinks she’s quite good. During their match, Stacy captures many pieces – more than Dan, in fact! But Dan still wins, achieving the objective of putting Stacy’s king into checkmate.

With a huff, Stacy says, “If the winner of chess was whoever captured the most pieces, I would have won!“

Is this a valid statement from Stacy? Explain your answer.

Okay, now on to the explanation: Of course it isn’t. Dan should smirk at the statement. But why? Stacy did capture more pieces, didn’t she? Yes – when the objective was to put the opponent’s king in checkmate! Dan, being much better at chess, was perfectly aware of how many pieces he was sacrificing, willingly giving them up in order to better position his remaining pieces to win the game. He played the way he did because of the rules and objective. If the objective had been “capture the most pieces” from the beginning, then he would have played with the same amount of skill but very different strategy!

You will see this specific sort of post-loss complaint in a lot of different spheres. “If the prettiest tower of blocks was the winner, then I would have won!” (But yours didn’t fall over, so you won.) “If the candidate who won the popular vote won, then we’d have a different president!” (Maybe – or maybe the candidates would have both campaigned differently, knowing that was the case.)

The point is that there might be very legitimate complaints about the way a particular contest is evaluated. But the time to figure that out is before the contest, not after when you’ve accomplished something other than the evaluated objective.