Academy Task 5 - How many kicks? - Printable Version +- SSL Forum (https://forum.simulationsoccer.com) +-- Forum: Player Development (https://forum.simulationsoccer.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Capped Point Tasks (https://forum.simulationsoccer.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=23) +---- Forum: Articles (https://forum.simulationsoccer.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=46) +---- Thread: Academy Task 5 - How many kicks? (/showthread.php?tid=6131)

Academy Task 5 - How many kicks? - RussDrivesTheBus - 2025-01-18 How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? A group of students from the University of Purdue set out to answer that very question. They designed a robot modelled after the human tongue and had it lick hundreds of lollies to get to the bottom of this mystery. Ultimately, their results came out to around 400 licks. However, some other independent studies from other schools used actual humans to test the hypothesis and they came out to around 100 licks on average to get to the chocolatey center of the Tootsie Pop. But Russ, what the hell does this have to do with Simulation Soccer? My little baby bird, I shall feed you. Many many seasons ago, Reykjavik set out to answer the age old question: how many kicks does it take to win a Cup title? Many people have asked this, but @RashfordU was determined to test the hypothesis and find an answer. So, as any good scientist would, he gathered his resources and built a soccer playing machine. Reykjavik has been the most dominant force in the SSL for almost a decade of seasons, and this was all in the name of the experiment. Designing a footballing robot built on friendship, Reykjavik was able to win 5 league titles out of the last 8. In a similar amount of time, they played in 8 of the last 9 Cup finals. The team had been successfully crafted for the purpose of playing in the final and finding out how many kicks it took. The results they found, however, were shocking! Of those 9 attempts, Reykjavik was defeated 8 times, including a run of 6 losses in a row and a loss to the first ever Minors team to win the cup. Our scientists were beginning to believe that winning the cup was actually impossible and the simulation was creating a counter team and counter strategy to make it as such. It was only on the 9th attempt that the dominant Icelanders were able to break the duck and win the cup in a dominant 6-2 victory. The relief was visible as a massive sigh was let out in the laboratory that concocted this mechanical soccer playing monolith. But the results of the experiment truly seemed confounding. I previously mentioned the other groups of students that tried the experiment with the lollipops and got a much different result (with much less effort). I can't help but see the direct correlation here as well. Plenty of other teams tried to see how many kicks it took to win a cup, and they were rewarded with a MUCH smaller number. Discussions on methodology will be conducted and notes will be compared, because if you have to tell a new GM that it will take 9 attempts to win a cup final, I fear most of them will quit before they even begin. But for now, I'd say the results of the Cup experiment are inconclusive at best.