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Flexible Positions and Set-Plays

In order to test our flexible teamwork structure, we ran a team using 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 Figure 1, the flexible team significantly outperformed the default team over the course of 38 games.

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Table 1: The flexible team won 34 out of 38 games with 3 ties.

Further experimentation showed that both aspects of the flexible team contributed significantly to the team's success. Figure 2 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.

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Table 2: Only using flexible positions and only using set-plays works better than using neither.



Peter Stone
Sat Oct 3 16:42:52 EDT 1998