The London Spitfire-Los Angeles Gladiators’ playoff match was a weird one. L.A. swept London on Wednesday only to be swept themselves, twice, on Saturday. From the Spitfire’s perspective, the maps went like this:

LLLWWWWWW

Fortunately for us, that grouping of wins and losses makes the predictive math easy. L.A. has a SAMP of 0.5551, while London’s is 0.5944. That means London had about a 54% chance of winning, and 46% chance of losing, each map, which gives us the following percentages:

London losing three in a row: 0.459831483 ^ 3 = 0.097229604 = 9.72%

London winning six in a row: 0.540168517 ^ 6 = 0.02841374 = 2.84%

So there was about a 10% chance that the Gladiators would win three in a row versus the Spitfire, and a less than 3% chance that the Spitfire would rattle off six straight map wins against the Gladiators. You can multiply those two numbers together to get 0.002415304, or a 0.24% chance – about 1 in 414 – that it would have gone like that.

That last figure, however, is a little misleading, since it represents the probability of any nine-map showdown between the two teams going 6-3 in favor of London. LLLWWWWW is one possible iteration, but so is LLWWWWLWW or LWWLWLWWW or WWWLWLWWL or anything else. All of those had that same 0.24% chance of occurring. In total, there are 84 (9!/6!3!) different ways a 6-3 record could be achieved, making the overall chance of any 6-3 total in favor of London (84 * 0.002415304) = 20.29%.

(Though even that is a little misleading, since London winning six straight maps at the start, or six out of the first seven or six out of the first eight would have meant the match was over and we never would have gotten to nine maps.)

So maybe it wasn’t that improbable a victory after all, and it’s just our seeing the pattern that makes it seem so. At the very least, it provided me with some interesting edits to make to the Records page, especially if London can expand on its six-map playoff winning streak and knock off New York, which won eight straight earlier this season. Los Angeles, however, will have to wait until next year to see if it can “better” its now-record six-map playoff losing streak – a record the Gladiators probably wish they didn’t own.