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Catch-Up: A Rule that Makes Service Sports More Competitive

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  • Steven J. Brams
  • Mehmet S. Ismail
  • D. Marc Kilgour
  • Walter Stromquist

Abstract

Service sports include two-player contests such as volleyball, badminton, and squash. We analyze four rules, including the Standard Rule (SR), in which a player continues to serve until he or she loses. The Catch-Up Rule (CR) gives the serve to the player who has lost the previous point - as opposed to the player who won the previous point, as under SR. We also consider two Trailing Rules that make the server the player who trails in total score. Surprisingly, compared with SR, only CR gives the players the same probability of winning a game while increasing its expected length, thereby making it more competitive and exciting to watch. Unlike one of the Trailing Rules, CR is strategy-proof. By contrast, the rules of tennis fix who serves and when; its tiebreaker, however, keeps play competitive by being fair - not favoring either the player who serves first or who serves second.

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  • Steven J. Brams & Mehmet S. Ismail & D. Marc Kilgour & Walter Stromquist, 2018. "Catch-Up: A Rule that Makes Service Sports More Competitive," Papers 1808.06922, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1808.06922
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Isaksen, Aaron & Ismail, Mehmet & Brams, Steven J. & Nealen, Andy, 2015. "Catch-Up: A Game in Which the Lead Alternates," MPRA Paper 108784, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2014. "Beautiful Game Theory: How Soccer Can Help Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10260.
    3. Bradley J. Ruffle & Oscar Volij, 2016. "First-mover advantage in best-of series: an experimental comparison of role-assignment rules," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 45(4), pages 933-970, November.
    4. Marc Pauly, 2014. "Can strategizing in round-robin subtournaments be avoided?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(1), pages 29-46, June.
    5. Anbarci, Nejat & Sun, Ching-Jen & Ãœnver, M. Utku, 2015. "Designing fair tiebreak mechanisms: the case of FIFA penalty shootouts," Working Papers eco_2015_5, Deakin University, Department of Economics.
    6. Brams, Steven J. & Ismail, Mehmet S., 2016. "Making the Rules of Sports Fairer," MPRA Paper 69714, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2018. "Testing the effect of serve order in tennis tiebreak," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 106-115.
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    Cited by:

    1. Mehmet S. Ismail, 2023. "Human and Machine Intelligence in n-Person Games with Partial Knowledge: Theory and Computation," Papers 2302.13937, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    2. Csató, László, 2017. "European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup can be manipulated," MPRA Paper 82652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Anbarcı, Nejat & Sun, Ching-Jen & Ünver, M. Utku, 2021. "Designing practical and fair sequential team contests: The case of penalty shootouts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 25-43.
    4. Singh, Aaditya & Scarf, Phil & Baker, Rose, 2023. "A unified theory for bivariate scores in possessive ball-sports: The case of handball," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 1099-1112.
    5. Bühren, Christoph & Kadriu, Valon, 2020. "The fairness of long and short ABBA-sequences: A basketball free-throw field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism

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