Compete in tournament

[YouKnowWho]

If you think that you will have less than 50% chance to win in tournament, will you still compete in that tournament?

There is a big difference between "losing in tournament" vs. "losing in training".

Before you take your SAT (or GRE) exam, you should collect at least 100 old SAT (or GRE) old exams. After your initial 10 exams, according your score, you will know what your weakness is. You then start to fix your weakness. In your next 10 exams, you should have better score. Again according to your score, you try to fix your weakness. After you have gone through all 100 exams by repeating the process 10 times, you then take your "real SAT (or real GRE)", you should have the best score that you have prepared so hard on it. If the SAT (or GRE) score can determine whether or not you will be accepted by the university or the graduate school, you should never test the "real test" until you have taken "100 non-real tests". To me, that's preparation.

All foreign students who comes to US to study will need to take TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam. You will need a score A to be accepted by most university in US. The TOEFL is offered for every 3 months. Before you take that exam, you will go to TOEFL school. They will force you to take over 200 old TOEFL exams in those 3 months. The day when you take the real TOEFL exam, you can answer those question so fast that you will never image that you truly can. Because the same pattern will guarantee to be repeated in every single TOEFL exam such as:

- If I had had ... I would have had ... (assume something in the past),
- telephone book (a noun followed by another none) vs. book of telephone,
- boulevard (for some unknown reason, this vocabulary seems to appear in every single TOEFL test).
- ...

In MA, you should test your skill many many times against different opponents before you go to compete tournament. You just don't go to tournament without fully test your skill before then. If your winning ratio is below 50%, you may have to wait until your winning ratio can reach to 80%. That's not "quitting in training" but "quitting in tournament" until you have more faith in your skill.

Your thought?

[mawali]

I use to do that but I have found that many tai chi fellows refuse to train with others knowing they are deficient in basic hitting, blocking and boxing.
Many do not want to acknowledge that so they adhere to this qi stuff and convince themselves of their 'nothingness". by assert chi and other stuff. Just my view

Just an existential MA observer

[GeneChing]

...I didn't adopt such a preposterous strategy. For the SAT, I just read one of those prep books. For the GRE, I went to the Bahamas with a history book on the topic. I scored high enough to get into the Universities.

There's really no comparison between these exams and tournaments. I competed internationally too. As for fully testing your skill, I'm not ever sure what that means. Fighting with shovels maybe?

[YouKnowWho]

You can test yourself without going to tournament. Today, you can go to any local MMA gym and test your skill against all different styles. You can learn a lot from those non-tournament testing. If you think you are a hammer and everybody look like nails to you, that's the time to build up your "tournament record". If you still think that you are a nail and everybody all look like hammers to you, you are not ready to start to build up your "tournament record" yet.

[SPJ]

If you think that you will have less than 50% chance to win in tournament, will you still compete in that tournament?
Your thought?

Yes. I would.

If we are both "equal" in skills and training,

tactics and strategy would come into play.

We learn from it.

[Faux Newbie]

I'm not that young. So, if I look at someone, and think, "I've only got a 50% chance against them," I try to figure out what it is they do or what kind of fighter they represent that poses me a problem, research how to overcome that problem, and train that until it's natural.

If I were a competitor, or training a team, I'd try to get fights for my people they can win, but that they have to work for the win, and try to make it so they improved from it.