Penalty Shots in Ice Hockey: a game-theoretic approach.

Good afternoon everybody,

As I promised a few days ago, I am now uploading the first research I made regarding game theory applications to Sports.

As you have probably guessed by now, the aim of this project was to model the penalty shot situation in Ice Hockey, and to find the equilibrium.

This research was made in collaboration with Geneva Servette Hockey Club (GSHC) and in particular with the help of Sébastien Beaulieu who I would like to thank again for his support.

You can download the file here, and the abstract is provided below:

This paper aims to analyze the penalty shot piece of play in Ice Hockey within a game-theoretic framework. A mathematical model will be provided for this situation in order to apply the Bayesian games setup. To make the model more realistic, measures taken with a professional ice hockey club will be used. The data will then be used to compute the mixed strategies equilibria and the meaning of these results will be discussed.

The results if this study provide a mixed strategy equilibrium with probabilities that could possibly be applied by players.

I think it would be a good idea to see if these strategies are actually being used by professional hockey players, maybe using videos. I would be glad if something conducted such research.

For those of you who do not wish to look at the mathematical aspects of the modeling, you can simply skip part 3 and focus on the introduction and the conclusion.

Please feel free to post comments to let me know your feedback.

See you soon for more.