Strategic Decisions in Esports: Insights from the IDLab Workshop

On September 20, 2024, a research on strategic decisions of teams in cyber sports matches was presented at the IDLab workshop. The paper was introduced by Egor Ivanov, an IDLab research assistant, and coauthored by Maria Molodchik, Petr Parshakov, and Evgenia Shenkman. They studied how professional cybersports teams make decisions when choosing which cards to exclude from the game and which to select.

The study involves the creation of a theoretical model of strategic choice, but already now, based on empirical data, we can conclude that teams tend to exclude maps on which their opponents are strong, and leave maps where they themselves perform better. This rule holds true for teams at any level. Such findings may be useful not only in cybersports, but also in other areas, such as jury selection in trials, where the exclusion system is also applied.

The study provoked a lively discussion among the workshop participants, including Dmitry Dagaev (National Research University Higher School of Economics), Dennis Coates (University of Maryland), Elena Shakina, and Angel Barajas (University of Vigo). Their comments and suggestions will help the authors to finalize and extend the study.