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Comment by freditup | Hacker News Reader

I wish the Wikipedia article would elaborate more on some of the strategies and tactics that are unique to three-sided football instead of just recounting previous tournament results. Perhaps a good opportunity to contribute to Wikipedia for some HN reader who's knowledgable?

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I have to wonder how mature tactics are given there must only be a handful of fields in existence, if any. If the winner is determined by ceding the fewest goals, then I'd imagine defense is the priority. Also, shifting the focus of attack quickly would surely happen- why spend much effort to attack a well defended goal with a lot of traffic in front.

Winner of a game in a normal football is also the one who cedes the fewest goal of the two.

But crucially here is that on a 3 sided game that rule is not symmetrical anymore.

On 1v1 saying that the winner is the one who concedes the least or that scores the most is equivalent.

Whereas on a 3 sided game it is not equivalent. See this example below (if you change the rule a different team will have won the game):

    Team X: Scored/Conceded
    Team A: 4/5
    Team B: 5/3 (winner if highest scorer wins) 
    Team C: 1/2 (winner if lowest "conceder" wins)

[Edited to make the total scored and conceded add up to the same number.]

How do you have 11 scored goals and only 7 conceded goals?

They got A the wrong way around

Yeah, sorry edited fixed!

An alternative measure would be "best goal difference", which also would make team B the winner in your example, but wouldn't necessarily be the same as highest scorer, or lowest conceder.

As seen in an alternative outcome, this gives us 3 potential winners.

    Team X: Scored/Conceded
    Team A: 6/4 (winner if best goal difference wins)
    Team B: 7/6 (winner if highest scorer wins) 
    Team C: 0/3 (winner if lowest "conceder" wins)

This would fail to penalize a team that accidentally knocks the ball into their own goal, unless you add a special case rule for that scenario.

And if you didn't special case it would lead to an "interesting" strategy of trying to score on yourself whenever you were in serious danger of having someone else score on you.

It would often be quite impossible to determine which team scored a goal, for instance in 'scrimmage' situations, or own goals.

Plus it would create weird situations where a attacking team would stop a goal from the other attacking team on the line and try to get in on their own name.

That's a problem in 2-team football, anyway (the individual who scored always has to be identified), although the point you raise about own goals is an interesting one. Maybe an own-goal should award half a goal to the other two teams?

The player who scored is identified, but it doesn't really matter because it goes to the scoring team regardless of who scored it.

I could imagine there being some interesting tactical situations where you have to decide whether you want to take the risk of passing the ball to an opponent 1 player who has an opportunity at scoring in the goal of opponent 2. Your own goal is always going to be adjacent, so what if opponent 1 sees the opportunity to put the ball in YOUR goal instead?

I imagine the emerging pattern would be to pass to the weaker opponent in order to knock out the stronger adversary, as games played out on the tv gameshow Weakest Link. Whenever a player receives a pass, the perhaps the best strategy is to score on the stronger team, which might necessitate duplicity.

Presumably the strategy is don't pass to your opponent unless they have a clear cut scoring chance in the other opponent's goal

Just from a counting argument, the strategy is probably closer to cooperate against the leading team. Then you commit half of your players to the attack, as does the cooperating team, and you can then match the leading team, while having half of your team in defensive. (And the only uncommitted opposing players are half of the players of your cooperating partner.)

Since the game is about who concedes fewest, I'd be packing my team with defenders and drilling them mostly on defensive organization.

A well organised and skilled defence should be capable of repelling a team with numerical superiority for extended periods anyway (particularly with a lack of coordination amongst attacking players and a pitch shape which eliminates the ability to get in behind the opponents at the byline) and there's always the incentive for one of the collaborating teams to defect, especially if they're getting tired of not scoring and then the ball's lobbed into an area where they'll find themselves in a one on one situation if they decide to chase it. And even if that strategy fails, the alliance against you is only likely to last until you stop leading.

Same question but more specific - what stops two teams from ganging up on the third? When I played 3SF with the "most goals wins" rule it quickly turned into "the two stronger teams take turns beating the weaker one" - I suspect that "fewest goals conceded" might help with that issue, but I've not considered it thoroughly enough to figure out if it solves it...

There's some info about tactical consequences here:

http://aaa.t0.or.at/documents/aaarules.htm

> "Meanwhile the penetration of the defence by two opposing teams imposes upon the defence the task of counterbalancing their disadvantage through sowing the seeds of discord in an alliance which can only be temporary. This will be achieved through exhortation, body language, and an ability to manoeuvre the ball and players into such a position that one opposing team will realise that its interests are better served by breaking off the attack and allying themselves with the defending team. Bearing in mind that such a decision will not necessarily be immediate, a team may well find itself split between two alliances. Such a situation opens them up to the possibility of their enemies uniting, making maximum use of this confusion. 3-sided football is a game of skill, persuasion and psychogeography."

That's the problem with three-player chess, too. Once two players turn against one, it's a beatdown.

But wouldn’t the weaker of the allied teams decide to defect since it would lose if the third team were fully vanquished? I don’t think the strategy is so straight-forward.

The winner of 3SF is determined by the fewest goals conceded. Game theory will prevent any long term 2v1s.

If there's information added from this conversation, it will be quickly covered in [citation needed] and no original research.

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