Mat. stat. seminarium 12 januari 2004

KTH"

Tid: 12 januari 2004 kl 1615-1700

Plats : Seminarierummet 3733, Institutionen för matematik, KTH, Lindstedts väg 25, plan 7. Karta!

Föredragshållare: Joakim Ahlberg

Titel: Strategy and Football: A Game Theoretic Model of a Football Match. (Examensarbete)

Sammanfattning:

There can be unambiguous, yet non-trivial, theoretical insights about the behaviour of players in simple game theory. Sport constitutes a perfect underlying subject for game theory. In this thesis a football match is analysed with help of a game theoretic model. The idea of subgame perfect equilibrium is the method that has been used to gain insight into the strategy choices a team uses in different stages of the game.

The optimal strategy in this model is depending on the state of the game, i.e. in which time the game currently is, and what the present score difference is. What emerge from the model are:

When the score difference is zero: Both teams, under certain restriction, attack.
When a team is leading: It attacks if it is early in the match, but starts defending more and more as the time goes by.
When a team is losing: It enhances its attack along with the time.

These results are also in unanimity with the sport itself. Through that they indicate that football teams behave consistently with rationality and equilibrium. However, one must always have in mind that scoring in football is a stochastic process.

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