OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - Wildcards 84-78 team beat 83-79 in Championship Game

rburgh · 10-11-2023, 10:27 AM

The number of 1-8 upsets in the first round of the Stanley Cup are well known. Several wild card teams in the NFL have made the Super Bowl, at least one has won it. The '60 Pirates beat the '60 Yankees despite being outscored by a bundle in the series.

A math professor friend of mine once decided to investigate this, and decided that all playoffs to date (early 1990's I think) in all sports were within the bounds of probability. For instance, a team that played .600 ball in the regular season wasn't much more than a 2:1 favorite over a .500 team in a 7 game series, and in shorter series it was even less.

We have hundreds of league playoffs every week, it would be odd indeed if the top seeds always won. Even if it's 100:1 for the bottom seed to win the ring, it should happen half a dozen times every Sunday.

The first computer game issued by Strat O Matic had a routine to shift the odds for hitters and pitchers in the latter parts of the season to push their season stats toward their real life numbers, and to push playoff results toward the real life results. Unfortunately for them, there were statisticians among their user base, and those guys raised hell. They removed those routines from all future versions of the game that I ever owned, without ever acknowledging that they had been there in the first place.

10-11-2023, 10:27 AM	#3
rburgh All Star Starter Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Pittsburgh Posts: 1,085	All playoffs are a crap shoot The number of 1-8 upsets in the first round of the Stanley Cup are well known. Several wild card teams in the NFL have made the Super Bowl, at least one has won it. The '60 Pirates beat the '60 Yankees despite being outscored by a bundle in the series. A math professor friend of mine once decided to investigate this, and decided that all playoffs to date (early 1990's I think) in all sports were within the bounds of probability. For instance, a team that played .600 ball in the regular season wasn't much more than a 2:1 favorite over a .500 team in a 7 game series, and in shorter series it was even less. We have hundreds of league playoffs every week, it would be odd indeed if the top seeds always won. Even if it's 100:1 for the bottom seed to win the ring, it should happen half a dozen times every Sunday. The first computer game issued by Strat O Matic had a routine to shift the odds for hitters and pitchers in the latter parts of the season to push their season stats toward their real life numbers, and to push playoff results toward the real life results. Unfortunately for them, there were statisticians among their user base, and those guys raised hell. They removed those routines from all future versions of the game that I ever owned, without ever acknowledging that they had been there in the first place.