Winner Of Game Research Articles

Time-optimal surveillance between two differential drive robots with a limited field of view

Keeping an intelligent agent under surveillance with an autonomous robot as it travels in the environment is one of the essential tasks in robotics. This work addresses a pursuit-evasion surveillance problem between two Differential Drive Robots moving on a plane without obstacles. One of them, the pursuer, is equipped with a limited field-of-view sensor and aims to maintain the other robot (evader) inside its detection region for as much time as possible. On the contrary, the evader wants to escape as soon as possible. Unlike prior studies that address the same problem, based on heuristic approaches, we frame it as a zero-sum differential game, and we use differential game theory to find a solution with theoretical guarantees. In particular, we compute the players' time-optimal motion strategies to achieve their goals near the end of the game and provide analytical expressions describing them. These strategies are in Nash equilibrium, meaning that any unilateral deviation by a player from these strategies does not provide such player benefit toward its goal. Our analysis exhibits the existence of a Transition Surface in which the evader switches its controls. We also determine the game's winner based on the players' initial configurations and velocities.

Social Networks and Large Language Models for Division I Basketball Game Winner Prediction

Social Networks and Large Language Models for Division I Basketball Game Winner Prediction

A Deep Reinforcement Approach for Energy-Efficient Resource Assignment in Cooperative NOMA-Enhanced Cellular Networks

In this paper, an energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem of cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (CNOMA) network is proposed to jointly determine the user pairing, subchannel assignment, and power control scheme. We decompose it into two steps: In the first step, the optimal closed-form expressions of the power control problem are derived. Based on these, the EE optimization of whole system is formulated as a self-play Go game with the maximum EE as the winner, by constructing a virtual Go board with rows and columns representing indices of users and subchannels, respectively. The each move is to select a position on the Go board (i.e., select a user that has not been assigned to any channel and then assign a channel to it), until all users are assigned on the subchannels. Then, a deep Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) model is proposed, where a MCTS guided by a neural network simulates multiple possible trajectories to search each move by evaluating its achievable EE reward, while the neural network is trained by the training data generated from the searching of MCTS to predict move selections and also the winner of games. The simulation results show that the proposed method is superior to a variety of conventional schemes in terms of EE in negligible computational time.

Predicting the winning team in basketball: A novel approach

Predicting the winner of a basketball game is a difficult task, due to the inherent complexity of team sports. All 10 players on the court interact with each other and this intricate web of relationships makes the prediction task difficult, especially if the prediction model aims to account for how different players amplify or inhibit other players. Building our approach on complex systems and prototype heuristics, we identify player types through clustering and use cluster memberships to train prediction models. We achieve a prediction accuracy of ∼76% over a period of five NBA seasons and a prediction accuracy of ∼71% over a season not used for model training. Our best models outperform human experts on prediction accuracy. Our research contributes to the literature by showing that player stereotypes extracted from individual statistics are a valid approach to predict game winners.

Effects of a sport competition on acute affective response in wheelchair basketball players.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of sport game outcomes on acute affective responses in injured veterans. Twenty-three wheelchair basketball players (mean age, 38.39±11.78 years) participated in this study and were divided into two groups: game winner group (n=12) and game loser group (n=11). All participants completed the Physical Activity Affect Scale immediately before and after participation in the first game of a wheelchair basketball tournament. Non-parametric statistical tests were used to examine a significant difference in acute affective responses between the groups and over time within each group. The losers experienced significantly higher negative affect and lower positive affect at the end of the first game compared to the winners. Therefore, the results of the present study indicated that the experience of losing may diminish the positive effect that sport participation can have.

Significance of smash and smash-lunge sequence in singles badminton matches in elite players

ABSTRACT This study examined the number of smashes and smash-lunge sequences in elite men’s singles matches. Semi-final and final match videos of the Olympic Games, Grand-Prix, and World-SuperSeries in 2016 were analysed. Points won from smashes and smash-lunge sequence in a game and an entire match were compared between the winners and losers, and whether points won from the smash-lunge sequence occurred immediately, within three rallies or more were analysed. The game winners scored more (p < 0.05) points than the losers in a game from smashes (4.8 ± 1.9 vs 3.5 ± 1.3 points) and from smash-lunge sequences (4.0 ± 2.8 vs 1.7 ± 1.6 points). Match winners won more (p < 0.05) points from smashes (11.0 ± 2.6) and smash-lunge sequences (7.4 ± 4.8) than match losers (8.2 ± 3.0 and 5.5 ± 3.7, respectively). The match winners won 5–10% more points from the smash-lunge sequence than losers (p < 0.05), and 60% of the points were won immediately from the smash-lunge sequence for both the winners and losers. The smash-lunge sequence is important in badminton. Winners were more effective than the losers at scoring points from this sequence, and in particular, at winning points immediately off the smash-lunge sequence, rather than in the following rallies. Thus, improving the techniques of the smash-lunge sequence is necessary.

Simeon Poisson and the Stanley Cup Finals

The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America currently comprised of 31 teams. Their seasons culminate with the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The top sixteen teams (eight in each conference) qualify for the playoffs. The conference champions face off in the final round, known as the Stanley Cup Finals. The authors show that goals scored per game in the Stanley Cup Finals follow a Poisson distribution. Using the results of all 438 Stanley Cup Final games played since 1939 (when the Finals became a best-of-seven series), chi-squared goodness-of-fit tests show that the observed distribution of goals scored per game by series winners, series losers, and game losers closely approximate a Poisson theoretical model. The combined number of goals scored by both finalists and goals scored by game winners do not

Guarding a Subspace in High-Dimensional Space With Two Defenders and One Attacker.

This article considers a subspace guarding game in high-dimensional space which consists of a play subspace and a target subspace. Two faster defenders as a team cooperate to protect the target subspace by capturing an attacker which strives to enter the target subspace from the play subspace without being captured. A closed-form solution is provided from the perspectives of kind and degree. Contributions of the work include the use of the attack subspace (AS) method to construct the barrier, by which the game winner can be perfectly predicted before the game starts. In addition to this inclusion, with the priori information about the game result, a critical payoff function is designed when the defenders can win the game. Then, the optimal strategy for each player is explicitly reformulated as a saddle-point equilibrium. Finally, we apply these theoretical results to two half-space and half-plane guarding games in 3-D space and 2-D plane, respectively. Since the entire achieved developments are analytical, they require a little memory without the computational burden and allow for real-time updates, beyond the capacity of the traditional Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs method. It is worth noting that this is the first time in the current work to consider the target guarding games for arbitrary high-dimensional space and in a fully analytical form.

Two dependent probabilistic chip-collecting games

Alice and Bob take turns to collect chips in the following manner. In each turn, Alice tosses a fair coin, which decides whether she collects a or b chips, where a and b are positive integers. If Alice collects a chips, then Bob collects b chips, and vice versa. We consider two variants of game play that have different rules in determining the winner. Namely, the winner of Game 1 is the first player to collect at least n chips, while the winner of Game 2 is the first player to collect a positive number of chips congruent to 0 modulo n. We fully determine the formula for the winning probabilities of each player in Game 1, and determine the best and worst case scenarios in terms of winning probabilities in Game 2.

Optimal strategies for the lifeline differential game with limited lifetime

This paper considers the Lifeline Differential Game with limited lifetime in a plane which is divided by the lifeline into a play region and a goal region. A single evader aims at entering the goal region from the play region by penetrating the lifeline without being captured, while a single pursuer strives to prevent the evader from that by capturing or delaying it with non-zero capture radius. We introduce the concept of the limited lifetime within which the evader has to achieve its goal. Determining the game winner and finding the strategies for two players are challenging due to non-unique terminal conditions and various initial configurations, which is beyond the scope of the classical Hamilton–Jacobi–Isaacs (HJI) approach. An evasion-region based geometric method is proposed to solve this game qualitatively and quantitatively. A new class of Apollonius circles is first introduced and thus a pursuit strategy is proposed for the pursuer to capture the evader at a guaranteed distance of the lifeline. Based on the pursuit strategy, the space of initial states is separated by the so-called barrier into two winning regions which lead to different outcomes of the game. In each winning region, a critical payoff function is designed and the optimal strategy for each player is investigated. The extension to multiplayer cases is also discussed. The presented results are analytical and thus allow for real-time updates.

Non-Islamist parties in post-2011 Egypt: winners in an MB-free political sphere

Purpose Years after the 2011 uprising Egypt, it seems that the country’s non-Islamist parties are still included in the political game. After significant alterations in their political sphere by mid-2013 at the advent of the Muslim Brother exclusion and the subsequent discrediting of Salafi al-Nour party, non-Islamist parties took clear part in the mobilization for presidential elections (2014, 2018) and competed for legislative seats in 2015. Nonetheless, it is difficult to expect them to turn into long-term key political players with clear-cut ideological postures, unique platforms and strong grass root mobilization. With the exception of the electoral gains scored by numbered parties like Free Egyptians’ party and Nation’s Future in 2015 legislative elections, these parties seem to be lagging behind esp. in terms of their popular base; who became winners at the advent of the radical exclusion of the MB from July 2013 onwards. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on archival research and guided by basic assumptions of rational choice institutionalism, mainly game-theoretic versions of the approach. It is divided into four sections, three of them are chronological and the last one is thematic. Findings Egypt’s non-Islamists engaged in the post-2011 political sphere, with strong Islamist rivals crippling their political chances in the first two years following the 2011 uprising. They surely capitalized on the exclusion and discrediting of the latter, but they suffered lack of ideological clarity and fragmentation from 2011 onwards with no enough evidence these weaknesses were surpassed after Islamists were “out of their way”. The only strand of non-Islamist parties which came out as “game winners” were those possessing the resources and enjoying overt “friendly” relations with al-Sisi regime. Nonetheless, internal conflicts inside key secularist parties shed light on their capacity to turn into long-term players in Egypt’s political sphere. Originality/value Very few papers were published on Egypt’s secularists parties after the 2011 uprising from the perspective of the alteration that occurred in their political environment affecting their political weight and gains. More generally, literature on non-ruling parties in authoritarian contexts mostly reduce these parties to secondary roles allocated by ruling regimes. The paper seeks to overcome both shortages.

Valeur des biens, valeur des hommes. Les prix pour les vainqueurs aux jeux funéraires en l’honneur de Patrocle (Iliade XXIII, 257-897)

L’étude des prix distribués au cours des jeux funéraires en l’honneur de Patrocle, au chant XXIII de l’Iliade d’Homère, permet d’explorer la complexité de la notion de valeur dans les sociétés de l’âge du Fer égéen. À côté de biens anonymes, qui ont des poids standards ou sont convertibles en bœufs, on trouve des objets de très grand prix qui ont une histoire et sont attachés à de grands héros morts pendant la guerre. Tous proviennent des trésors du défunt et de l’organisateur des jeux, Achille. Ils sont attribués aux différents participants selon des modalités complexes, qui obéissent aux règles de l’honneur de différentes manières, en fonction de leur âge, de leur statut et de stratégies subtiles d’optimisation des gains économiques et symboliques.

Technical, tactical and movement analysis of men's professional tennis on hard courts.

There is very little information in tennis relating performance to both the movement of the players and the effectiveness of their shots. This study aimed to identify differences between winners and losers in the volume and intensity of their movements, as well as in the effectiveness of their shots. Matches (N.=8) at the 2011 ATP 500 tournament in Valencia (Spain) were recorded and analyzed using SAGIT, a computerized vision-tracking system. Data were split into points for movement analysis, and into games for stroke analysis. Players winning points used more offensive strategies and spent more time in the offensive zone than point losers. They also forced point losers to cover more distance at a higher speed. Game winners hit more winning shots, made fewer unforced errors, and were more effective than game losers. These results suggest that winner players controlled the game by playing more offensively and forcing losers to play in defensive positions, move greater distances at a faster speed, and make more errors.

Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge.

A long-standing goal of artificial intelligence is an algorithm that learns, tabula rasa, superhuman proficiency in challenging domains. Recently, AlphaGo became the first program to defeat a world champion in the game of Go. The tree search in AlphaGo evaluated positions and selected moves using deep neural networks. These neural networks were trained by supervised learning from human expert moves, and by reinforcement learning from self-play. Here we introduce an algorithm based solely on reinforcement learning, without human data, guidance or domain knowledge beyond game rules. AlphaGo becomes its own teacher: a neural network is trained to predict AlphaGo's own move selections and also the winner of AlphaGo's games. This neural network improves the strength of the tree search, resulting in higher quality move selection and stronger self-play in the next iteration. Starting tabula rasa, our new program AlphaGo Zero achieved superhuman performance, winning 100-0 against the previously published, champion-defeating AlphaGo.

Boxing Out

Boxing Out Adrian Matejka (bio) I never had hops, so I got on at Bertha Ross Park the same wayI kept my spot on the middle school squad: immaculatelyfree-throwing with follow through, flicked wrist left hanging for the imaginary game winner when winner meant fly girlfriendinstead of sulking solo in the gym corner like I was backat the Spring Formal as one slow jam after another played for the couples-only dance. At Bertha Ross, we bunched intoour pickup corners, right in front of a white construction workerwho said, Gerry Cooney will put that big nigger in his place to no one while chewing a ham sandwich down to the red rinds.We all heard him say it between warm-up behind-the-backdribbles & almost-raindropped jumpers, but acted like we didn’t. & we almost won the game anyway until somebody’s drunkuncle in a Peaches & Herb shirt called one of those old-man fouls.But Cooney didn’t beat Holmes. He didn’t even come close. [End Page 32] Adrian Matejka Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), which was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His most recent collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. He is the Lilly Professor/Poet-in-Residence at Indiana University in Bloomington. Copyright © 2015 University of Nebraska Press

From schadenfreude to mitfreude? Estimating viewership loss and rivalrous relationships in otherwise neutral markets

We measure the loss in viewership over the course of National Football League games to identify engagement of out-of-market viewers throughout the contest, and how this is moderated by the presence of a rival team in the game. Our analysis reveals that out-of-market viewers are more likely to stay tuned throughout a game when their local team’s rival is ultimately the game winner. This brings about important considerations in the context of measuring the effect of rivalry on demand. Our results point toward future research within the context of in-group bias and mitfreude behaviors in rivalrous relationships such that viewership depends not only on home team and in-group competitiveness, but also highlights preferences such as out-group competitiveness, or lack thereof. We therefore suggest an amendment to the Neale and Rottenberg frameworks to include how rivalry induces competitive complementarity.

Predicting the Winner of Games in World Cup Soccer Matches

In this research, statistical models were developed that can be used to predict the outcomes of World Cup soccer matches. Least squares regression and logistic regression techniques were used in the development of the models using data from the 2006 World Cup Matches. The models were tested using data from the 2010 World Cup Matches. Predictions were made for the 2014 World Cup Championship assuming no results were known ahead of time.

Minimum violations and predictive meta‐rankings for college football

This article presents two meta‐ranking models that minimize or nearly minimize violations of past game results while predicting future game winners as well as or better than leading current systems—a combination never before offered for college football. Key to both is the development and integration of a highly predictive ensemble probability model generated from the analysis of 36 existing college football ranking systems. This ensemble model is used to determine a target ranking that is used in two versions of a hierarchical multiobjective mixed binary integer linear program (MOMBILP). When compared to 75 other systems out‐of‐sample, one MOMBILP was the leading predictive system while getting within 0.64% of the retrodictive optimum; the other MOMBILP minimized violations while achieving a prediction total that was 2.55% lower than the best mark. For bowls, prediction sums were not statistically significantly different from the leading value, while achieving optimum or near‐optimum violation counts. This performance points to these models as potential means of reconciling the contrasting perspectives of predictiveness versus the matching of past performance when it comes to ranking fairness in college football. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 17–33, 2014

SEEDING IN THE NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT: WHEN IS A HIGHER SEED BETTER?

A number of methods have been proposed for predicting game winners in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) annual men’s college basketball championship tournament. Since 1985, more than 70% of the teams in the fourth, fifth, and sixth rounds of the tournament have been high-seeded teams (i.e., teams assigned seeds of one, two, or three); a method that can accurately compare two such teams is often necessary to predict games in these rounds. This paper statistically analyzes tournaments from 1985 to 2009. A key finding is that there is an insignificant difference between the historical win percentages of high-seeded teams in each of the fourth, fifth, and sixth tournament rounds, which implies that choosing the higher seed to win games between these seeds does not provide accurate predictions in these rounds, and alternate predictors or methods should be sought. Implications on gambling point spreads are discussed.

The relationship between the incidence of winners/errors and the time spent in different areas of the court in elite tennis

Martinez-Gallego R, Guzman JF, James N, Ramon-Llin J, Crespo M, Vuckovic G. The relationship between the incidence of winners/errors and the time spent in different areas of the court in elite tennis. J. Hum. Sport Exerc. Vol. 8, No. Proc3, pp. S601-S607, 2013. Winners and errors have been two of the most studied performance indicators in tennis, contributing to the prediction of match outcome and definition of the playing style of the players. Furthermore, the position occupied by the player on the court has also been shown to be a good indicator of both the final result and style of play. The aim of this study was to examine whether there were differences between game winners and losers in terms of number of winners and errors, and if there were differences in them according to the player's position. 8 matches of the 2011 ATP tournament 500 Valencia were recorded and analysed using SAGIT, a computer vision tracking system that allowed both players’ movements to be tracked automatically. The software was programmed to divide each half of the court into offensive and defensive zones. The data were divided in games (N = 188) for analysis purposes and the outcomes of the rallies were classified as winners, forced and unforced errors. The proportionate frequency of unforced errors for losers was higher than winners, and the proportionate frequency of winners and opponent’s forced errors was higher for winners than for losers. The time spent of winners in the offensive zone correlated with the percentage of winners and opponent’s forced errors, while for the losers time spent in the offensive zone correlated with the percentage of unforced errors. These results suggest that when game winners are in offensive zone they take advantage to hit more winners or force opponent’s error. On the contrary when game losers are in offensive zone, they commit more