Can you still catch them, and where a points gap stops being reversible
Your data
Results
| How far ahead of you they are | — |
| Most you can still finish on | — |
| Most they can still finish on | — |
| Most they can reach if you win everything | — |
| Biggest lead your remaining matches could still overturn | — |
| Wins needed if they take nothing more | — |
| Matches left at which this gap stops being reversible | — |
The fourth row is the one that is usually missing, and it is the difference between two questions people ask as though they were one. Whether you can catch them is answered against the case where they lose everything. Whether it depends only on you is answered against the case where they lose only to you and win the rest.
How much of a lead each remaining match can still cover
| Matches you would have left | Largest lead still reversible |
|---|
That ladder is the least dramatic table on this site and the most final. A lead larger than the points still on offer is not a difficult lead, it is a decided one, and no run of form changes it. The bold row is the last one that still covers your current gap, and one row further down the argument is over.
The head-to-head count earns its place in the arithmetic rather than in the commentary. A match between the two of you is the only one whose result moves both sides of the subtraction, so the gap can swing by twice a win in it, while any other match can move it by one win at most.
It also puts a ceiling on what winning everything is worth. If you take all your remaining matches then they lose the ones against you, but nothing stops them winning the others, and with two meetings left that ceiling can still sit above your own maximum. Winning every match you have left is then not enough, which is a strange sentence to read and a plain thing to compute.
Everything here is an extreme rather than a forecast. It does not know who is injured or who has an easier run, and it is not trying to guess: it draws the boundary of what is still arithmetically possible and leaves the guessing to you.
Can I still catch them?
Arithmetically, yes for as long as your points plus everything still on offer to you comes to more than they have right now. That is the honest boundary, and it is the one every version of this question is answered against.
It is worth knowing what that answer assumes, though, because it assumes they take nothing at all from here. It is the boundary of the possible, not a description of anything likely.
Why is winning every remaining match sometimes not enough?
Because beating them only costs them the matches they play against you. Everything else on their calendar is untouched, and they can win all of it while losing to you.
With thirty eight points in six matches against forty five in six, two of them head to head, winning all six puts you on fifty six, and they can still finish on fifty seven. The page shows that ceiling next to your maximum precisely because the two are so often confused.
When is a gap mathematically over?
When it is larger than the points still on offer to you, which is the number of matches you have left times the points for a win. Not difficult, not unlikely: over.
The ladder below is the whole of it, for three points a win. Each match that goes by removes three from what is still coverable, so a gap survives being large for a while and then becomes final all at once.
| Matches you would have left | Largest lead still reversible |
|---|---|
| 6 | 18 |
| 5 | 15 |
| 4 | 12 |
| 3 | 9 |
| 2 | 6 |
| 1 | 3 |
| 0 | 0 |
Why does a match between the two of us count double?
Because it is the only match whose result moves both sides of the subtraction. Winning it takes three from the gap and denies them three in the same afternoon, so the gap can swing by six points across the two outcomes.
Any other match on either calendar can move the gap by three at most, which is why the fixture list matters as much as the table does. It is not superstition, it is where the arithmetic doubles.
Does any of this predict the season?
No, and it is not trying to. Every figure here is an extreme: the most either side can still reach, and the point past which one of those extremes stops being enough.
It knows nothing about injuries, fixtures or form, and it will not tell you that a run of six wins is plausible. What it will tell you is when six wins would not matter, which is a question with an exact answer.
Reactions
0
0 Comments
Be the first to comment