The states CP Part 3- Thinking Strategically

First, I want to discuss the concept of strategy generically.

In "The Theory of Poker" David Sklansky defines the perfect play as the one you would make if you could see your opponents cards. Whether a bluff raise or bluff catching call should be made are the two best examples of when seeing your opponents cards would heavily influence your decision. (this is a simplification, at a later date perhaps I will go into this more in depth but I have to get to the states CP or many of you will tune out).

He then goes on to explain the levels of poker thinking. Level 1- you are concerned with your cards, if you have a good hand you play it- if not you fold. Level 2- you start thinking about what cards your opponent is holding, and factor that into your decision ( a marginal hand in level 1 may become playable in level 2 because you believe your opponent has a marginal or worse hand). Level 3- you start thinking about what your opponent thinks you have. It gets more complex but we will stop there.

This tree of thinking complexity is an attempt to deal with the imperfect information of a poker game- since you can't see your opponents cards, you need to deal with it by trying to factor what they have and what they think you have as a best guess estimate.

In debate, you can see your opponents cards, literally. The incomplete information is
-how the judge will read/interpret their evidence in terms of quality
-how the judge will react to the negatives "spin" of their evidence
-same as the 2 above, replace opponents with your
-what arguments your opponent will chose to go for

In debating the states CP, most affs do the following
-write a 2AC to the CP
-write a 2AC to disads that are net benefits to the CP

And they do each of those in a vacuum- there is no interconnection between the two. This is level 1 thinking- the negative has read 2 arguments, I will write answers to each of them

Level 2- in this level of thinking the aff recognizes that the elections DA is a net benefit to the CP and makes answers that account for this
-reading add ons to solvency deficits that may turn/interact with the DA impact
-making arguments that the net benefit links or the perm avoids the link
-**most important** changing their strategy in answereing one or the other to debate them differently when they are run together

Few teams rise to level 2 thinking (other than the perm issue, which is often thrown out with no warrant and then forgotten, so I am not considering it).

What is level 3?

I'd be intereting in seeing what people thought about this, but no one ever posts any comments other than spammers, so I'll just tell you.

Level 3 thinking accounts for how the negative will react to the arguments that you make and tries to factor that into your strategic planning. I will give one example for the sake of brevity.

You read RPS, you know the neg will read states and Obama good with a soft power impact, and that in the 2NC they will say Obama solves the case because he will promote renewables. Your 1AC advantages were warming and competitiveness. You know your judge is a card carrying member of the cult of offense/defense.

1. Its hard to deny that indicators are Obama will promote energy R and D, that combined with the states CP make winning a solvency deficit to the competitiveness advantage difficult.
2. Many of your 1AC solvency arguments about why the fed is key relate to market perception- which while the states alone may not capture, states + Obama probably will


How do you use this information? here are some argument decisions you could consider
1. Read states disads- while not great, a higher liklihood of working
2. Impact turn politics- whereas normally you may go for defense, you know that given the CP and your judge this is a loser
3. Theory- while the states cp is generally though to be OK, a heavily focused offense/defense judge is usually good for theory arguments


Note that the 3 options discussed above stray radically from the usual solvency deficit o/w disad approach taken by most affirmatives. Since the above listed knowledge of the debate is probably true in most debates, and since few affirmatives adopt those 3 approaches we can see that there is a disconnect between what teams should be doing and what they are actually doing. Hence the success of the states cp- teams are not accurately gauging and responding to the limited information they have.