The world’s most popular sport has more than 250 million players in over 200 countries. Every week it fills stadiums with many millions more. This sport, soccer, is played by two teams of 11 players who cooperate to score goals while preventing their opponents from doing so. For each team, a game can have one of three outcomes — win, draw or lose.
This kind of game is usually part of a bigger business to determine the best team. The most common process is a league structure in which teams play each other and are then ranked by results. The team at the top of the rankings at the end of the season is the winner.
This kind of ranking seems pretty straightforward but it actually hides some subtle but important questions. Chief among these is the question of the value of a win. In most professional leagues, the answer is that a win is 3 times as valuable as a draw while a loss is worth nothing, written as (3-1-0).
