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BGonline.org Forums
OT -- Weekend Football Observations -- Long
Posted By: Steve Mellen In Response To: OT -- Weekend Football Observations -- Long (Casper van der Tak)
Date: Tuesday, 26 October 2010, at 1:13 p.m.
I don't really have a sense of how often teams make the wrong decision in these situations. My perception is that announcers (who tend to embody the conventional wisdom of any sport) insist on the "extend the game" strategy much more often than they ought to, though. If a player misses a 3-pointer the announcer will invariably point out that he could have extended the game by going for 2, even if the 3-pointer was the correct strategy.
There is a very strong human urge, as you see from this discussion, against taking an action that is perceived to lose the game if you fail. Thus we see teams punt the ball away with 2 minutes remaining rather than go for it on 4th down, because it lets them keep playing in hopes of a miracle rather than staking it all on one play. But just because you get to keep playing doesn't mean you made the right move.
The backgammon analogy is the situation where you hit loose against a closed board, in a position where you're basically gin if you get away with the hit. Is the hit right? Well, of course, it depends on the position! But the bad player doesn't even realize that it depends on the position; he just reasons that he better not hit, because he doesn't want to lose the game on the next roll. Backgammon does not map perfectly onto sports, of course, but there are a lot of lessons we can learn because probability theory is universal.
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