World Cup Game Theory

Now the World Cup starts in earnest. The mini-leagues of the group stage are over, and the first knockout match takes place today between Germany and Sweden. Soccer being a famously low-scoring game, such matches often finish in a draw and must be decided by penalty shootouts—a competitive form at which my own team, England, has a particularly harrowing record. Perhaps England's players should study a little more economics.

In soccer, penalty kicks pit the goalkeeper against a lone striker in a mentally demanding contest. Once the penalty-taker strikes the ball, it takes 0.3 seconds to hit the back of the net—unless the goalkeeper can somehow get his body in the way. That is simply not enough time for the keeper to pick out the trajectory of the ball and intercept it. He must guess where the striker will shoot and move just as the ball is being struck. A keeper who does not guess correctly has no chance.

Both striker and keeper must make subtle decisions. Let's say a right-footed striker always shoots to the right. The keeper will always anticipate the shot and the striker would be better off occasionally shooting to the left—because even with a weaker shot it is best to shoot where the goalie isn't. In contrast, if the striker chooses a side by tossing a coin, the keeper will always dive to the striker's left: Since he can't guess where the ball will go, best to go where the shot will be weak if it does come. But then the striker should start favoring his stronger side again.

The robocup

RoboCupTM is an international joint project to promote AI, robotics, and related field. It is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup chose to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is By 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer.
In order for a robot team to actually perform a soccer game, various technologies must be incorporated including: design principles of autonomous agents, multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition, real-time reasoning, robotics, and sensor-fusion. RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving robots under a dynamic environment. RoboCup also offers a software platform for research on the software aspects of RoboCup. One of the major application of RoboCup technologies is a search and rescue in large scale disaster. RoboCup initiated RoboCupRescue project to specifically promote research in socially significant issues.

World Cup Game

The World Cup Game is a football (soccer) game that is like no other soccer game. This is the first of its kind that closely resembles the current genre of German-style boardgames that have become so popular in recent years.
It is not a quiz game and it is not a single match style soccer game, but it covers two complete tournaments - the 1930 tournament in Uruguay and the 2002 tournament in Japan and Korea. Two games in one box. The 1930 game takes around an hour to play, while the 2002 game takes around 3 hours to play.

The box is weighty, coming in at just under 2kg, so you get a lot for your money. The components are 2 large boards, 74 National flag tiles, 182 Action tiles, 87 Action cards, 36 Plastic footballs, 4 'blob'dice, 3 score sheets, a rulebook and the box!

Home Page: www.gamesfortheworld.co.