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Flexible Positions and Set-Plays

In order to test the flexible teamwork structure, we ran a team using ball-dependent flexible positions with set-plays against one using rigid positions and no set-plays. Both teams used a 4-4-2 formation. As shown in Table 3, the flexible team significantly outperformed the default team over the course of 38 games.

   table370
Table 3: Results when a flexible team plays against a rigid team. The flexible team won 34 out of 38 games with 3 ties.

Further experimentation showed that both aspects of the flexible team contribute significantly to the team's success. Table 4 shows the results when a team using flexible positions but no set-plays plays against the default team and when a team using set-plays but rigid positions plays against the default team, again over the course of 38 games. Both characteristics provide a significant advantage over the default team, but they perform even better in combination.

   table380
Table 4: Results when only using flexible positions and only using set-plays. Each individually works better than using neither.



Peter Stone
Thu Dec 17 15:26:44 EST 1998