Players bet on whether the coins will fall with both heads (obverse) up, both tails (reverse) up, or with one coin a head and one a tail (known as "Ewan"). Two-up is a traditional Australian gambling game, involving a designated "spinner" throwing two coins or pennies into the air. Someone with greater knowledge of football (or probability) may be able to shed more light on this issue.Painting of 2-up game. This means that when flipping two coins, finding a tail and a head is more likely than getting, say, 2 heads. Each of these 4 results is equally likely. Similarly, if you flip two coins, you could get HH, HT, TH, or TT. So there are 3 different ways of getting ABB but only 1 way to get BBB. You could also get BAB, your second exam being an A grade. However, to get ABB you could get an A in exam 1, but BB in the others. This is because to get BBB there is only one way to do this: get a B in every exam. From 3 A-levels, a score of ABB is much more likely (and common) than BBB. This can be applied in other areas of life: In the UK, teenagers sit exams called A-levels when they are 18, which they need to go to university. This is a simplification of the issue (10 goals is less likely than 1 goal) but you get the idea. Again, there are two different ways to make 5-4 (depending on who won the match). And that a score of 4-4 is less likely than a score of 5-4. If we suppose that this is true when any number of goals can be scored, we can say that a score of 2-2 is less likely than a score of 2-1. Assuming that all are equally likely ( this is not the case but bear with me here), there is only a 1/3 chance of no goals being scored (making a draw). So there are actually 3 different possible scores: 1-0, 0-1 and 0-0. For the score to be 1-0, either Barcelona score 1 goal and Arsenal do not score, OR Arsenal score 1 goal and Barcelona do not score. For the score to be 0-0, Arsenal and Barcelona must each score zero goals. Let us take an example to make this clear: Arsenal vs Barcelona.
It might appear that each score is equally likely, but there are two different ways that you can get a score of 1-0, but only one way to get a score of 0-0. (this is a special football match where the first goal wins, and if there are no goals then they stop after 30 minutes.)
Let us say (for example) that there are 2 different ways a football match can end: 0-0 and 1-0. This is a more difficult question than it looks. I believe (going by the statement of The_Serious_Account) that this is supported by the fact that most matches do not end in a draw. A draw of 1-0 is (looking at this simplistically) is less likely than a score of 0-0. I'd be interested to know if the stats reflect a change on this, I'd suspect so. Teams used to go away with the aim of drawing and 'getting them back to our place'. Things like Champions League league and knockout stages are interesting, where you have the away goal. Even the battling teams like Stoke and Everton 'battle forwards' rather than exclusively backwards. The days of George Graham like teams is gone.
Last man professionalism gets you sent off. It's also the case that the rules have changed dramatically, and surfaces and equipment are much more in favour of the attack, so it's much harder to close a game out with hard work and rough tactics. Win half lose half will usually see you comfortably in the top half, near European qualification. I remember the great Milan team of Maldini, Baresi and the dutch trio drawing more than half their games on the way to the scudetto in the early nineties (while losing very few if any).ĭrawing all games will usually see you relegated. This moves up the win ratio since teams gamble as it is better to lose half and win half than draw all. There used to be 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw in the premier league now there is 3 for a win.
Last year 76% of games ended in one team or other winning, with 24% draws. But on a quick check it seems that is not the case any more, at least for the English Premier League where 1-0 is now more common.