(Korean Series) Samsung has a 51% chance of winning

The Dong-A Ilbo conducted an analysis of 100,000 simulations on the 2014 Korean Series, in which the Nexen Heroes and the Samsung Lions will face off to win the title by winning four games, by using the “Monte Carlo method” on Monday, a day prior to the event’s opening.

The analysis results suggested that the chance for Samsung, which was atop in the regular season, to secure victory for four consecutive years at this year’s Korean Series, came to 51.2 percent. This effectively means the team has a 50-50 chance to win the title. Specifically, the odd for Samsung to win the Korean Series championship with four wins and two losses was the highest at 16.0 percent, followed by a chance for the team to do so with four wins and three losses (15.8 percent).

Even in the case Nexen clinches the Korean Series title for the first time since its foundation, the probability for Nexen to do so by garnering four wins and three losses (15.5 percent) was the highest, which was followed by the odd for the team to do so by securing four wins and two losses (15.3 percent). This means that overall the forecast for the two teams to hold Game Six or more stood at 62.5 percent.

The simulation method named after Monte Carlo, the Monaco city famous for casinos, entails calculation of function value by relying on repeated random sampling to obtain distribution of probabilistic entities. The method has been named as such given that it is similar to the method of decision making by throwing the dice countless times. The method was used in the “Manhattan project” that developed a nuclear bomb for the first time, and is sometimes used to determine the price of financial products.

How accurate the method would be when applied to pro baseball? When making simulations with the playoffs, in which Nexen competed with the LG Twins, the chance for Nexen to defeat LG by garnering three wins and one loss was the highest at 27.6 percent, and their race actually ended in Nexen’s victory with three wins and one loss.