4 papers
The uncertainty of a tournament draw: Insights from the Champions League
László Csató, András Gyimesi, Dries Goossens +3
The group draw of major sports tournaments implies some uncertainty, with lucky teams often enjoying a substantial unfair advantage. First in the literature, we propose a technique…
Match classification in the last round of four-team round-robin tournaments
László Csató, András Gyimesi
Classification of matches played in the last rounds of sports competitions is a well-established tool for evaluating tournament designs. Both deterministic and probabilistic approa…
How to optimise tournament draws: The case of the FIFA World Cup
László Csató
The organisers of major sports competitions use different policies with respect to constraints in the group draw. Our paper aims to rationalise these choices by analysing the trade…
A hidden benefit of incomplete round-robin tournaments: Encouraging offensive play
László Csató
This paper aims to explore the impact of tournament design on the incentives of the contestants. We develop a simulation framework to quantify the potential gain and loss from atta…