BGonline.org Forums

What makes a player World Class

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 26 November 2009, at 4:18 p.m.

In Response To: What makes a player World Class (Stick)

There have been some statistical studies of other sports, e.g., "streak shooting" in basketball. The studies show that the occurrence of streaks is not any longer than would be expected by random chance. This is not to say that there is no such phenomenon as streak shooting, but it does show that most people's intuitions about how long a "random" streak can be are far off the mark.

I haven't tried to do any calculations, but I suspect that the existence of the doubling cube and of gammons/backgammons increases the variance of backgammon match results, so that streaks in backgammon may be even longer than in other games and sports.

Messages In This Thread

• What makes a player World Class
  trichard -- Wednesday, 25 November 2009, at 2:41 p.m.
  • What makes a player World Class
    Christian Munk-Christensen -- Wednesday, 25 November 2009, at 3:09 p.m.
    • What makes a player World Class
      rew -- Wednesday, 25 November 2009, at 3:59 p.m.
      • What makes a player World Class
        Rich Munitz -- Wednesday, 25 November 2009, at 9:59 p.m.
        • What makes a player World Class
          rew -- Wednesday, 25 November 2009, at 10:36 p.m.
          • What makes a player World Class
            Stick -- Thursday, 26 November 2009, at 10:11 a.m.
            • What makes a player World Class
              Timothy Chow -- Thursday, 26 November 2009, at 4:18 p.m.
    • What makes a player World Class
      6stones -- Friday, 27 November 2009, at 10:33 a.m.
      • Karsten Bredahl
        Timothy Chow -- Friday, 27 November 2009, at 4:14 p.m.
        • Karsten Bredahl
          Daniel Murphy -- Saturday, 28 November 2009, at 11:05 p.m.
      • What makes a player World Class
        christian munk-christensen -- Friday, 27 November 2009, at 9:59 p.m.
  • What makes a player World Class
    ragoon -- Wednesday, 25 November 2009, at 3:50 p.m.
  • What makes a player World Class
    Timothy Chow -- Wednesday, 25 November 2009, at 4:02 p.m.
  • What makes a player World Class
    Sam Pottle -- Thursday, 26 November 2009, at 3:17 a.m.