IS YOUR Euro 2012 fantasy football team sliding down the league at an alarming rate? If you thought Chris from the office was hard to beat, watch out – soon you might be competing against a computer.
Sarvapali Ramchurn, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton, UK, and colleagues have developed an artificial football manager that ranks in the top 1 per cent of the 2.5 million players on the official English Premier League fantasy football game.
The AI manager evaluates players’ previous performance statistics to predict how many points they will receive during the forthcoming week. It then picks a squad that will maximise the expected fantasy-football score while adhering to the rules of the game, such as how much it costs to buy or exchange a player.
Read more here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428713.700-ai-football-manager-picks-a-winning-team.html