Game Theory in Team Sports Tactical Performance
Game theory examines interactive decision-making in which everyone’s choices have an impact on the actions of the other participants. Game theory have many applications, and team sports tactical performance is an example of non-zero-sum game. In this paper, “players” are sport teams(opponents and co-players) and predictability/unpredictability of individual player’s actions. The authors, Josko and Nives talked about the predictability of a player’s most frequent tactical performance in a team sport match as well as the results for the same team’s tactical performance. These can lead to considering utilities of one player’s specific decisions. Accordingly, the following main situations are possible: 1). predictability for the co-players and unpredictability for the opponents; 2). predictability for co-players and predictability for the opponents; 3). unpredictability for co-players and unpredictability for the opponents; 4). unpredictability for co-players and predictability for the opponents. By looking at this issue from the perspective of game theory, it is possible to assess benefits for particular outcomes by imagining various scenarios that might arise during a sporting match.
The matrix below shows the outcomes from the four situations respectively. Outcomes are taken into account from the perspective of the sport performance’s utility, whether for a specific player, their team, or the team they are competing against. According to the hypotheses offered by the author, predictability is better than unpredictability for the players both in the same and different team. The degree of predictability of a player’s most common tactical performance in a team sport game is taken into consideration, with implications for both the tactical performance of the player’s own team (co-players) and the opponent team. In this case, the issue of collaboration between team members during a sporting contest (between two teams) is taken into consideration and is shown by hypotheses derived from game theory and psychological theories. In four different scenarios, a player’s particular choices during a team sport competition might be taken into account.
Source: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/114113#:~:text=In%20this%20article%2C%20game%20theory,non%2Dzero%2Dsum%20game.