Which sport has the biggest luck factor?

[MuresanForMVP]

How do so many people think baseball involves the most luck? The season is 162 games long, the better teams win out. Are we considering stuff like injuries, trades,etc as "luck"? I could see a case for costly errors, and in that case maybe the playoffs come down to luck and momentum but I think it's absurd to say that baseball has the biggest luck factor.

[By-Tor]

Hole-in-one, luck or skill?

Eagle from the fairway, luck or skill?

Bounce of the ball off a mound towards the hole rather then the rough, luck or skill?

Granted there is a tremendous amount of skill involved in golf, outside of the top players in the world (and even them at times), when somebody relatively unknown wins, we will more times then not hear about the 'good breaks' or 'lucky bounces' they received.

I think a previous poster nailed it. Luck in golf can be the difference between 1st place or 10th.

[Assani Fisher]

I don't know if I would put hockey as least lucky though....it seems as if almost every year low seed get far in the hockey playoffs. In fact, I think that basketball is easily #1. For most of the past 15 years or so in the NBA, you could've picked 5 teams before the season started and one of them would've been the NBA Champ. You can't say that about any other sport.

[mosdef]

Your question is poorly defined.

Do you mean how much luck is involved in a single game outcome? A season outcome? Determining the league championship? The structure of the league will go a long way towards defining the last two, rather than the nature of the game itself.

In fact, if you want to "measure" and compare luck, you're pretty much restricted to defining a random variable and estimating its variance. So go ahead and give me an r.v. and I'll get back to you. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[gusmahler]

Considering that Singh and Woods both have had seasons where they won more than 25% of the tourneys they entered, I'd say that luck in golf is being overstated here.

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
Considering that Singh and Woods both have had seasons where they won more than 25% of the tourneys they entered, I'd say that luck in golf is being overstated here.

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You have to balance this versus sample space.

For example, you could claim that the Colts won 87.5% of all their games last year, so there's little luck. Or is that it's easier to sustain luck over a small number of games (namely, 16)?

[gusmahler]

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Considering that Singh and Woods both have had seasons where they won more than 25% of the tourneys they entered, I'd say that luck in golf is being overstated here.

[/ QUOTE ]

You have to balance this versus sample space.

For example, you could claim that the Colts won 87.5% of all their games last year, so there's little luck. Or is that it's easier to sustain luck over a small number of games (namely, 16)?

[/ QUOTE ]

Golf is against 100+ competitors. The fact that the cream rise to the top so often suggests that luck isn't a factor over the course of a season.

I guess this all depends on what OP means by "luck". Over the course of a year, a #125 golfer will rarely finish over Woods. But in a single random tourney, the #125 golfer probably has a better shot at Woods than the Raiders have at the Colts in a single game.

[JPinAZ]

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[ QUOTE ]
Considering that Singh and Woods both have had seasons where they won more than 25% of the tourneys they entered, I'd say that luck in golf is being overstated here.

[/ QUOTE ]

You have to balance this versus sample space.

For example, you could claim that the Colts won 87.5% of all their games last year, so there's little luck. Or is that it's easier to sustain luck over a small number of games (namely, 16)?

[/ QUOTE ]

If a professional poker player won 25% of the major tournaments he entered in a year (I have no idea how many Singh & Woods played to get 25%. Maybe 12?), would you say they were lucky?

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Considering that Singh and Woods both have had seasons where they won more than 25% of the tourneys they entered, I'd say that luck in golf is being overstated here.

[/ QUOTE ]

You have to balance this versus sample space.

For example, you could claim that the Colts won 87.5% of all their games last year, so there's little luck. Or is that it's easier to sustain luck over a small number of games (namely, 16)?

[/ QUOTE ]

If a professional poker player won 25% of the major tournaments he entered in a year (I have no idea how many Singh & Woods played to get 25%. Maybe 12?), would you say they were lucky?

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends - if he/she entered 8 tournaments and won 2 and sucked out repeatedly then I would say he/she's pretty luck to have won 2. If he/she enters 200 and wins 50, I'd say he/she is very likely the best player around.

But saying "player X wins Y% so that can't be luck" doesn't make any sense as a stand alone piece of information.

[capone0]

I don't think Golf has that much variance, easily proved that Tiger and others dominate. Yes others do win as well but as a whole in the long run top players win way more than average.

Football I don't think has much luck. The best team wins on most weekends. Other than injuries which cause variance in all sports, it's pretty easy to pick winners in the NFL while it's hard to pick the winners against the spread. I think you get similar results in Basketball and Hockey. They are more team sports than Baseball which consists mostly of the pitcher, catcher and batter. Now what differs in Baseball in comparison to other sports is that the pitcher differs between every game. A dominant pitcher will not have much variance but the team while switching between good and bad will.

Another thing of note in Golf there really aren't home field advantages while in the team sports there are. Home teams of course win much more on average then road teams which lessen the variance there. Personally I think Golf doesn't have much variance. I think Baseball has the most.