Analysing a built-in advantage in asymmetric darts contests using causal machine learning

DOI10.1007/S10479-022-04563-0MaRDI QIDQ6170912zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Daniel Göller

Publication date 13 July 2023

Published in Annals of Operations Research (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.07165

zbMATH Keywords

built-in advantagecausal machine learningcontest designheterogeneityincentivesoperational research in sports

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Learning and adaptive systems in artificial intelligence (68T05) Noncooperative games (91A10) Multistage and repeated games (91A20)

Abstract: We analyse a sequential contest with two players in darts where one of the contestants enjoys a technical advantage. Using methods from the causal machine learning literature, we analyse the built-in advantage, which is the first-mover having potentially more but never less moves. Our empirical findings suggest that the first-mover has an 8.6 percentage points higher probability to win the match induced by the technical advantage. Contestants with low performance measures and little experience have the highest built-in advantage. With regard to the fairness principle that contestants with equal abilities should have equal winning probabilities, this contest is ex-ante fair in the case of equal built-in advantages for both competitors and a randomized starting right. Nevertheless, the contest design produces unequal probabilities of winning for equally skilled contestants because of asymmetries in the built-in advantage associated with social pressure for contestants competing at home and away.

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Cited in

(3)

• The impact of dual fairness concerns on bargaining game and its dynamic system stability
• Understanding the effect of contextual factors and decision making on team performance in Twenty20 cricket: an interpretable machine learning approach
• A general framework to quantify the event importance in multi-event contests

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