EPL Game Version 2.0

On Christmas, Patrick and I played another game of the English Premier League soccer game that I discussed in an earlier post. Once again the stats were quite realistic: Chelsea and Manchester City tied 2-2. Drogba scored both Chelsea goals, while Tevez and Adebayor scored for Man City.

The problem is that the game just isn't very exciting to play. A typical game takes about 30 minutes and goes as follows: Patrick and I roll the dice non-stop saying "nothing happens," occaissionally passing the dice to the other person. About once a minute the die roller says "scoring opportunity," makes two more die rolls and says "misses it," followed by more die rolling. About six times during that half hour a shot actually makes it to the keeper, and about half of the time it's an actual goal.

Now I can hear millions of Americans saying that it sounds exactly like a typical soccer game. And, in some ways they're right (except that it's 90 minutes for those six scoring chances). It may be the case that the game is a perfect statistical model of Premier League football, but it's really not fun. Dennis watched us play for about the first 15 die rolls (about two minutes) before walking away.

So, it was back to the drawing board this week. (I'm telling myself that dreaming up new ways of statistically modeling a soccer match and working through the numbers is good "exercise" for my day job.) I think that I've got a better way of dealing with it -- essentially a pair of die rolls (one for each team) will tell the players how many opportunities they have for the next 10 minutes -- removing one layer of "nothing."

Patrick and I will probably try it out Friday night or Saturday. I've got a feeling that he'll just want to keep it the way it is, but we'll see what happens.