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The best NBA team will beat the worst NBA team with extremely high probability. Much higher than the probability that the best MLB team beats the worst MLB team

by bjterry 12y ago

The best NBA team will beat the worst NBA team with extremely high probability. Much higher than the probability that the best MLB team beats the worst MLB team. For example, when the San Antonio Spurs played the New Orleans Pelicans on March 25, the average odds implied a probability of around 96%[1]; when the Texas Rangers played the Minnesota Twins on August 31 2013, the implied win probability was around 75%[2]. I think that your system would probably score basketball much higher than baseball (if I had to make a guess, there are probably 5-6 90% spans between high school basketball and NBA basketball, and 3-4 spans between high school baseball and MLB baseball), implying that basketball is a harder sport. It would certainly be a very interesting metric, and one I would love to see calculated more formally. That said, I'm not sure it captures the intuition of "hardest game" that effectively. To be the best at a game depends primarily on the number of people who play it at the elite level and the time investment they put in, combined with the importance of natural talent. Suppose there were a game which had even longer chains than go, such as if each player always defeated the next stronger player with 90% probability, and there were 1000 players who played recreationally. We wouldn't think of this as a particularly hard game, because to be an elite player at the game, all you'd have to do is take it on with a professional level of commitment and you'd quickly move up in the ranks. So the difficulty of a game at elite levels must at some point include a hefty weighting of popularity and commercial appeal. As to the importance of natural talent in this idea, you simply can't play in the NBA if you are 5'0", and having such a physical limitation would tend to increase what people perceive of as the difficulty of the game. If there were a board game that required a 150 IQ to even understand the rules, people would definitely call it a very difficult game. 1: http://www.oddsportal.com/basketball/usa/nba/san-antonio-spurs-philadelphia-76ers-b9LS21bn/ http://www.oddsportal.com/basketball/usa/nba/san-antonio-spu... using the highest odds and converting to probability, which is equivalent to the "best bid-offer spread" 2: http://www.oddsportal.com/baseball/usa/mlb-2013/texas-rangers-minnesota-twins-z5ZHdinm/ http://www.oddsportal.com/baseball/usa/mlb-2013/texas-ranger...

V-2 12y ago
Very good points Chess is the best researched game of all time, yet it still progressed tremendously in recent decades (thanks to becoming a professional sport in the West - around the Fischer era - and the appearance of computers, of course). We know how long the "food chain" is, but we can't tell to a certainty how long it can become (how close can a human get to perfect play), even if the pool of motivated players is very wide. Current world champions are standing on the shoulders of the giants. Alekhine or Capablanca, geniuses as they were, wouldn't have a shot for the title if they didn't catch up with modern developments. And there are PLENTY. Memorization plays a big role these days. In one of the games in the Topalov vs Anand match, Anand slipped because he messed up the order of moves - all home preparation!! - around the 27th move or so. (Does this mean that humanity has already traversed the entire steep part of the learning curve?) So the chain is still growing. Does it mean that chess is becoming more difficult game? It's a Platonic question, really :) Do we mean chess as such, and the innate difficulty of the game, imprinted in its rules that remain fairly stable - no major rule changes for the last couple of centuries, I believe? The IDEA of chess, so to speak? Or do we mean chess AS IT IS PLAYED, or the reflection of the perfect idea :) In the early era of competitive chess we had the so-called Romantic period, in which aesthetics of the game, the style, was valued over cold efficiency and - for example - it was considered ungentlemanly not to accept a gambit. Was it just a cultural convention hurting the level of the game? Or was it a different flavor of the game, in which a player had to fullfill an additional responsibility they are now relieved from, and thus not quite the same discipline? Just my two cents, some chaotic food for thought :) Sorry about the language, not a native speaker here.

by bjterry 12y ago

V-2 12y ago

Very good points Chess is the best researched game of all time, yet it still progressed tremendously in recent decades (thanks to becoming a professional sport in the West - around the Fischer era - and the appearance of computers, of course). We know how long the "food chain" is, but we can't tell to a certainty how long it can become (how close can a human get to perfect play), even if the pool of motivated players is very wide. Current world champions are standing on the shoulders of the giants. Alekhine or Capablanca, geniuses as they were, wouldn't have a shot for the title if they didn't catch up with modern developments. And there are PLENTY. Memorization plays a big role these days. In one of the games in the Topalov vs Anand match, Anand slipped because he messed up the order of moves - all home preparation!! - around the 27th move or so. (Does this mean that humanity has already traversed the entire steep part of the learning curve?) So the chain is still growing. Does it mean that chess is becoming more difficult game? It's a Platonic question, really :) Do we mean chess as such, and the innate difficulty of the game, imprinted in its rules that remain fairly stable - no major rule changes for the last couple of centuries, I believe? The IDEA of chess, so to speak? Or do we mean chess AS IT IS PLAYED, or the reflection of the perfect idea :) In the early era of competitive chess we had the so-called Romantic period, in which aesthetics of the game, the style, was valued over cold efficiency and - for example - it was considered ungentlemanly not to accept a gambit. Was it just a cultural convention hurting the level of the game? Or was it a different flavor of the game, in which a player had to fullfill an additional responsibility they are now relieved from, and thus not quite the same discipline? Just my two cents, some chaotic food for thought :) Sorry about the language, not a native speaker here.