Related papers: Optimal Strategies and Rules for the Game of Horse
We introduce the Tournament Rank Probability Score (TRPS) as a measure to evaluate and compare pre-tournament predictions, where predictions of the full tournament results are required to be available before the tournament begins. The TRPS…
A novel algorithm for actively trading stocks is presented. While traditional expert advice and "universal" algorithms (as well as standard technical trading heuristics) attempt to predict winners or trends, our approach relies on…
The Stochastic Abacus is can employed to compute winning probabilities for each vertex of a rooted tree in the game "Pass the Buck", with the starting vertex being the root of the tree. For all but the simplest trees, the abacus can't…
I address the difficult challenge of measuring the relative influence of competing basketball game strategies, and I apply my analysis to plays resulting in three-point shots. I use a glut of SportVU player tracking data from over 600 NBA…
This paper uses category theory to develop an entirely new approach to approximate game theory. Game theory is the study of how different agents within a multi-agent system take decisions. At its core, game theory asks what an optimal…
We find a remarkable agreement between the statistics of a randomly divided interval and the observed statistical patterns and distributions found in horse racing betting markets. We compare the distribution of implied winning odds, the…
Imagine an invisible rabbit that starts at some unknown integer point $A$ on the number line. At each time step, it hops by a fixed but unknown integer stride $B$. Both $A$ and $B$ are fixed integers, but their values are unknown. Suppose…
In a recent article in American Scientist, Theodore Hill described a coin-tossing game whose pay-off is the number of heads over the total number of throws. Suppose that at a given point during the game you have 5 heads and 3 tails, should…
For some time, point-differential has been thought to be a better predictor for future NBA success than pure win-loss record. Most ranking and team performance predictions rely largely on point-differential, often with some normalizations…
A checkers-like model game with a simplified set of rules is studied through extensive simulations of agents with different expertise and strategies. The introduction of complementary strategies, in a quite general way, provides a tool to…
It is noted that some unusual moves against a strong chess program greatly weaken its ability to see the serious targets of the game, and its whole level of play... It is suggested to create programs with different weaknesses in order to…
This article investigates the influence of luck and strategic considerations on performance of teams participating in the M6 investment challenge. We find that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that the extreme Sharpe ratios…
This paper develops metrics from a social network perspective that are directly translatable to the outcome of a basketball game. We extend a state-of-the-art multi-resolution stochastic process approach to modeling basketball by modeling…
Owning up to the authors' occasional mixed performances when playing darts we follow up on the ingenious work to determine the optimal aim to score high by Tibshirani et. al [JRS A 174, 213 (2011)] and expand on maximal expected reward…
In the game of cricket, the result of coin toss is assumed to be one of the determinants of match outcome. The decision to bat first after winning the toss is often taken to make the best use of superior pitch conditions and set a big…
In this paper, we investigate a pursuit-evasion game in which a mobile observer tries to track a target in an environment containing obstacles. We formulate the game as an optimal control problem with state inequality constraint in a simple…
In sports competitions, teams can manipulate the result by, for instance, throwing games. We show that we can decide how to manipulate round robin and cup competitions, two of the most popular types of sporting competitions in polynomial…
"Guess Who?" is a popular two player game where players ask "Yes"/"No" questions to search for their opponent's secret identity from a pool of possible candidates. This is modeled as a simple stochastic game. Using this model, the optimal…
In the Hunters and Rabbit game, $k$ hunters attempt to shoot an invisible rabbit on a given graph $G$. In each round, the hunters select $k$ vertices to shoot at, while the rabbit moves along an edge of $G$. The hunters win if, at any…
The game show Lucky 13 differs from other television game shows in that contestants are required to place a bet on their own knowledge of trivia by selecting a range that contains the number of questions that they answered correctly. We…