Abstract

In sport tournaments, it is often believed that each contestant has an effect on his (or her) opponent which carries over to the next game of that opponent. In this paper, the authors empirically study the influence of the carry-over effect on elite football and tennis matches. In other words: does the previous opponent of your opponent affect your result? Notice that in each match, two carry-over effects may play a role (from the previous opponents of each of both players in the current match), and that these effects can be positive (if they increase team B’s odds against team X) or negative (if they decrease these odds). The authors make no assumption on the size or direction of this influence. The result of this study will tell us whether statistically significant carry-over effects are present in elite football and tennis matches. In section 2, the authors outline our methodology and explain how the authors measure the influence of the carry-over effect. In section 3, the authors present and discuss the results, before formulating conclusions in section 4. Aus der Einleitung (geändert)