Many sports involve competitions between pairs of individuals or teams. The results can be simulated in a similar way to the tennis example in the previous section.

The results of individual games involve some randomness, in the sense that they cannot be predicted accurately before the games are played. Simulations can help to distinguish between this randomness and the relative abilities of the competitors .

Soccer league

In many sports, teams are grouped into leagues, and each team plays every other team in their league one or more times throughout during the year. Teams gain points for wins and newspapers often print weekly league tables of the total points that have been accumulated by each team.

The table below shows the points gained by all teams in the English Premier Soccer League at the end of the 1999/2000 season. Each team played all other teams twice (once at home and once away) — a total of 38 games — earning 1 point for each draw and 3 points for each win. The Premier League Cup is won by the team with the greatest number of points at the end of the season (Manchester United in the 1999/2000 season).

 TeamPts
1Manchester United91
2Arsenal73
3Leeds United69
4Liverpool67
5Chelsea65
6Aston Villa58
7Sunderland58
8Leicester City55
9West Ham United55
10Tottenham Hotspur53
11Newcastle United52
12Middlesbrough52
13Everton50
14Coventry City44
15Southampton44
16Derby County38
17Bradford City36
18Wimbledon33
19Sheffield Wednesday31
20Watford24