Disequilibrium Play in Tennis
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Are the serves of the world’s best tennis pros consistent with the theoretical prediction of Nash equilibrium in mixed strategies? We analyze their serve direction choices (to the returner’s left, right or body) with data from an online database called the Match Charting Project. Using a new methodology, we test and decisively reject a key implication of a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, namely, that the probability of winning a service game is the same for all serve directions. We also use dynamic programming (DP) to numerically solve for the best-response serve strategies to probability models of service game outcomes estimated for individual server-returner pairs, such as Novak Djokovic serving to Rafael Nadal. We show that for most elite pro servers, the DP serve strategy significantly increases their service game win probability compared to the mixed strategies they actually use, which we estimate using flexible reduced-form logit models. Stochastic simulations verify that our results are robust to estimation error.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | July 13, 2021 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Anderson, Axel |
|---|---|
| Author | Rosen, Jeremy |
| Author | Rust, John |
| Author | Wong, Kin-Ping |
| Organizer of meeting | Santos, Andres |
| Organizer of meeting | Shaikh, Azeem |
| Organizer of meeting | Wolak, Frank |
Subjects
| Subject | tennis |
|---|---|
| Subject | games |
| Subject | Nash equilibrium |
| Subject | Minimax theorem |
| Subject | constant sum games |
| Subject | mixed strategies |
| Subject | dynamic directional games |
| Subject | binary Markov games |
| Subject | dynamic programming |
| Subject | structural estimation |
| Subject | muscle memory |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Working paper |
| Genre | Grey literature |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Anderson, A., Rosen, J., Rust, J., and Wong, K. (2022). Disequilibrium Play in Tennis. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/mn788cx0073
Collection
SITE Conference 2021
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