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Show HN: The game where you test your offside decision-making skills against VAR

offsideornot.com

61 pointstruetaurus53 comments

VAR is Video Assistant Referee, i.e. an off-field (human) official that manually checks calls using instant replay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_assistant_referee

I don't follow association football at all and was unfamiliar with the term; based on the comments here I was guessing it was maybe some sort of machine learning algorithm.

What's the ratio of not offsides to offsides on the site? Going through it, it seems like a ratio of 1:20. I know the goal of the website is to show how VAR is broken, but there seems to be a lot of bias in the uploading/presenting. It'd be cool if there was a more even split in the scenarios presented.

I think the problem is that VAR for offsides errs only in the direction of call-things-offsides-that-shouldn't-be. I can't think of a time where it gave a goal that I though should have been called back, but so many times was a goal called back that seems like it shouldn't have.

It's actually better than it used to be though. I can't even count the number of goals and breakaways that were called back by the linesman because surely that guy who is open by 5 yards was offside.

The current interpretation of the rule appears to take "level with" the 2nd to last defender to be a zone of infinitesimal width. So having your body lined up with the defender's isn't enough to be level with if a pinky finger is extended beyond them. A player could have his entire torso behind the defender and be offside if his arm or toe extends beyond the defender. The defender could literally (by any reasonable definition) be between the forward and the goal and it would still be offside.

It's like they saw the NFL's ruling on what is a catch and thought it was a contest.

I actually like VAR, because referees and linesmen preferred to call back goals rather than risk an offside goal be allowed. So it is progress, but they wrote the rule to be a mechanical judgement, rather than a human one (as rugby does).

> he current interpretation of the rule appears to take "level with" the 2nd to last defender to be a zone of infinitesimal width. So having your body lined up with the defender's isn't enough to be level with if a pinky finger is extended beyond them. A player could have his entire torso behind the defender and be offside if his arm or toe extends beyond the defender. The defender could literally (by any reasonable definition) be between the forward and the goal and it would still be offside.

Only parts of the body that can score goal are used to judge offside. So, pinkies or arms don’t count.

And I don’t understand what you mean about “level with.” What should level with mean in your mind? No more than x cm ahead? Something is either equal something else or it’s not.

Let's say a toe sticks out past a defender. You're saying he's ahead. But he's also level with at the same time, and possibly even behind (closer to his own goal). A player is not a single point of existence. If the bodies are overlapping, it should be level with and called so by a human. cm precision on whether the ball passes the goal is fine, but the current offside is absurd -- his toe was a cm ahead when the rest of his body was not.

Also, this crazy obsession with precision and treating people like points on a plane ignores the lack of precision in when the ball is struck, or exactly what frame you're able to pull to view an image.

Meanwhile, you have dying athletes being fed miraculous water bottles to achieve full recovery. While a whole different argument in itself, it is pretentious to think the game is built around strict adherence to accuracy and precision.

In short, treating players as infinitesimal points, means that nobody is ever "level with". It ceases to have any meaning at all. I would also argument that a whole body's worth of overlap is more "level with" than 1cm sticking out is "being ahead" -- at least if "level with" is to have any meaning at all.

But they have chosen their interpretation, presumably to make it unassailable -- I get to dislike it and think that it's bad. I guess that having an entirely technical definition helps with all the corrupt bodies involved in the sport when it comes to international competition.

Built this in about 3 hours. Little game to test your offside decision-making skills against VAR.

Send me any feedback :)

Also looking for some abstract illustrations/graphics for the home page if anyone has suggestions

I'm not a soccer person and only have a vague sense of what the offside condition is for that sport. It would be helpful to have a reference, even just the text of the rule, for making close call decisions.

True good idea!

The offside rule is notoriously hard to describe. It's not even set in stone as there is a subjective element to making the judgement in some situations.

There's an entire Wikipedia article about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offside_(association_football)

It's not hard to figure out but it would be helpful to know which team (by kit color) is attacking.

Also is this just a collection of (controversial) calls VAR ruled as offside? Went through about 10-15 and that's all I got.

Nice idea. And yeah still need to get more added. It's not that easy to find.

Great job!

It would be nice to include images without the lines VAR draws, since that give away the decision most times. Maybe then compare the score with and without lines.

That would be awesome but getting those images are tricky unfortunately.

Or maybe covering up the graphics on the screen that says "Onside" like the 26 October City v Villa

I was not actually able to try the game. The images all loaded as blank white squares for me on mobile. It also seems to hijack the browser back button every time a picture is clicked.

Hmm what browser and mobile device do you have?

Android. Using habit browser.

Love it. It's pretty much always: I thinks onside, VAR says offside.

It'd be interesting to see how one's decisions compare to other people's decisions or other similar opportunities to yell at someone or something that the decision was wrong and everyone involved in making it was blind, in the pay of bettings sites, maliciously biased, etc.

Hey nice one.

Couple of ideas: - Add a time limit for decisions? Count down clock perhaps, forces users to make a choice quick and adds an element of pressure? - Illustrations, my go to is always: https://www.manypixels.co/gallery you'll see there are lots of football ones under the sports category.

nice thanks!

Really awesome idea! I'd love some kind of aggregated stats/summary page where you could see the most-disagreed-with decisions, etc.

My understanding is that the offside rule is based on where the players' feet are, but based on this VAR is doing it based off of any body part. Do I have the rule right? Or is the VAR bad at distinguishing feet from other body parts?

In any case, well done! In North American sports, there's a push to use a similar sort of system in baseball for calling balls/strikes, I'd be curious to compare my judgement against the computer system they're testing in some minor leagues.

If done right var could be awesome but it's flawed right now. Also there is no more "we will give you the benefit of the doubt". There needs to be a little leeway. About the rule: someone suggested to state the rule somewhere so we do that soon.

I agree entirely.

At least the VAR people should admit that there is an inherent margin of error in the technology (camera framerate, image resolution, blur..), and offsides calls should only be made when the result is outside that (somehow quantified) margin of error.

Any part of the body that can play the ball - so everything except arms and hands.

> My understanding is that the offside rule is based on where the players' feet are, but based on this VAR is doing it based off of any body part. Do I have the rule right?

Not quite. Head, body and feet all count.

https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules...

> A player is in an offside position if: any part of the head, body or feet is in the opponents’ half (excluding the halfway line) and any part of the head, body or feet is nearer to the opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent

> The hands and arms of all players, including the goalkeepers, are not considered.

> A player is not in an offside position if level with the: second-last opponent or last two opponents

I think 'body' also includes shoulders. Basically any part of the body that you can legally play the ball with.

Got it, that's helpful! In a lot of the ones I got wrong, however, it looked pretty clearly that the arm was the thing the VAR used to declare a player offsides.

I tried - and it's kinda hard for a not EU league fan to see which team is offensive/defensive. maybe it's just me.

That true. Thinking on this to make it easier to know the situation.

I think it's valid to question whether VAR is broken or not, however I think in the end it's a net benefit to football. Some will say it wasn't ready for production, but we all know real world usage is the real test that surfaces issues. And I say this as a Spurs supporter who's been burnt by VAR far too many times to count.

Also, thanks for not calling the website offsideSornot.com ;)

This goes to show how absolutely atrocious VAR is. Not only does it detect arms[1] as "offsides" in many cases, but in others it's blatantly wrong[2]. In [2], there's at least 2 (potentially 3) Alavés players closer to the goal line than Barça's offense.

[1] https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/offside-or-not.a...

[2] https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/offside-or-not.a...

VAR is just people, it's not like an algorithm is dictating the results.

The thing that kills me about VAR is that it is only being used for technical definition of the offside position rather than the spirit of the law. The offside law is to prevent cherry picking type of play where the attacker has an obvious advantage because of their location on the pitch. These hyper critical looks that VAR are giving us are down to the millimeter, and there is no advantage whatsoever of these positions on the pitch these players have.

Other uses of VAR have been fine. Ensuring a penalty was correct as called or as not called seems fair as it is a pretty crucial moment to basically be awarding a goal (I said basically). Being able to use replays to ensure the correct people are being cautioned/ejected is also okay in my book.

Are you training an AI VAR?

Imagine Offside or Not for Captcha instead! I would genuinely enjoy that.

haaha thats a genius idea!

The problem with VAR is that it thinks armpits are important in a soccer game. it should be measured either by the player's foot position in case of indirect goal, or by the the player's body part that scored the goal if a direct goal (goal score as a result of the touch).

Also... why is the resolution so poor? Sometimes there's only one camera angle.

Not easy to get the images, plus you can click on them to enlarge

I gave it a go, don't know the rules of soccer and wasn't sure what I was supposed to answer. Is the VAR always right? Or is the aim of the game to compare your vision to a bot's?

So VAR is not a bot, there is actually a person behind it. But the aim is basically to see if you would agree with their decision or not. I will soon add some help page to help people understand the offside rule.

In half of these positions, it's hard to tell which player is attacking. It would be nice if there was a note that explains which team we are looking at.

NEW CHANGES AFTER HEARING YOUR FEEDBACK. Attacking/Defending team specified AND colors to know which team is which!

Summarized here: https://twitter.com/strange_quirks/status/138341000985006081...

Every single (50ish) one I did was offside.

Same. This probably skews the stats at the bottom for agreed/disagreed with VAR since some people might try play this game to be correct.

Fun idea, I tried a few, and VAR is always wrong, is that the point of the project, to show how bad they are?

That's up for debate of course. But generally I would say var has been horrible

What is VAR? I thought it’d be some coding challenge about car, let, const

It looks like it could mean Visual Automated Referee. Or Video Assisted Referee

The way I've seen it implemented is as "Video Assisted Referee" and it's just a bunch of people outside the field looking at different screens and determining whether someone was offside or not. It's just some extra eyes in addition to the people in the field. I haven't seen the other definition (the automated one).

Video assistant referee - basically extra referees who help to make decisions by watching replays - used in many major Football (soccer) tournaments. In the offside rule (used in Pro competitions) you can't pass to a teammate, who is stood nearer to the opposing teams goal than any of the opposing team, excluding the goalkeeper. Subtle, brief, hard to spot infractions of the offside rule are possible. So one use of VAR is: when the regular referees think someone may have been offside during the lead up to scoring, they can pause the game and wait for the VAR team to look through where people where when the pass in question happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_assistant_referee

New feature: The results are displayed as a percentage of who agrees or disagrees with VAR

Thought this meant Value-at-Risk initially...

... I was wrong

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