Simulation of women's beach volleyball tournaments

A study was conducted on the tournament structure of women’s beach volleyball. The official world rankings were used in a logistic regression model to estimate the chance that each team has of winning a match. Match results were gathered from the 1998 and 1999 season, and testing showed that the official rating system provided a good estimate of performance for teams. The probabilities produced by the regression were then used as input to a simulation, which can be applied at any stage of a tournament to ascertain the probabilities of each team winning, or placing in any position. The simulation was used to investigate the efficacy of different tournament structures. The simulation was then used during the Olympic tournament, and the chance of each team winning was updated on a web page as the tournament progressed.