[HN Gopher] Show HN: The game where you test your offside decisi...
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       Show HN: The game where you test your offside decision-making
       skills against VAR
        
       Author : truetaurus
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2021-04-15 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (offsideornot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (offsideornot.com)
        
       | truetaurus wrote:
       | Built this in about 3 hours. Little game to test your offside
       | decision-making skills against VAR.
       | 
       | Send me any feedback :)
       | 
       | Also looking for some abstract illustrations/graphics for the
       | home page if anyone has suggestions
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | InitialLastName wrote:
         | I'm not a soccer person and only have a vague sense of what the
         | offside condition is for that sport. It would be helpful to
         | have a reference, even just the text of the rule, for making
         | close call decisions.
        
           | truetaurus wrote:
           | True good idea!
        
           | petepete wrote:
           | The offside rule is notoriously hard to describe. It's not
           | even set in stone as there is a subjective element to making
           | the judgement in some situations.
           | 
           | There's an entire Wikipedia article about it.
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offside_(association_football)
        
         | raizinho wrote:
         | It's not hard to figure out but it would be helpful to know
         | which team (by kit color) is attacking.
         | 
         | Also is this just a collection of (controversial) calls VAR
         | ruled as offside? Went through about 10-15 and that's all I
         | got.
        
           | truetaurus wrote:
           | Nice idea. And yeah still need to get more added. It's not
           | that easy to find.
        
         | rjtavares wrote:
         | Great job!
         | 
         | It would be nice to include images without the lines VAR draws,
         | since that give away the decision most times. Maybe then
         | compare the score with and without lines.
        
           | truetaurus wrote:
           | That would be awesome but getting those images are tricky
           | unfortunately.
        
         | pvg wrote:
         | It'd be interesting to see how one's decisions compare to other
         | people's decisions or other similar opportunities to yell at
         | someone or something that the decision was wrong and everyone
         | involved in making it was blind, in the pay of bettings sites,
         | maliciously biased, etc.
        
         | bl0b wrote:
         | Love it. It's pretty much always: I thinks onside, VAR says
         | offside.
        
         | grawprog wrote:
         | I was not actually able to try the game. The images all loaded
         | as blank white squares for me on mobile. It also seems to
         | hijack the browser back button every time a picture is clicked.
        
           | truetaurus wrote:
           | Hmm what browser and mobile device do you have?
        
       | nataliescy wrote:
       | I tried - and it's kinda hard for a not EU league fan to see
       | which team is offensive/defensive. maybe it's just me.
        
         | truetaurus wrote:
         | That true. Thinking on this to make it easier to know the
         | situation.
        
       | fastball wrote:
       | Every single (50ish) one I did was offside.
        
       | jkingsbery wrote:
       | My understanding is that the offside rule is based on where the
       | players' feet are, but based on this VAR is doing it based off of
       | any body part. Do I have the rule right? Or is the VAR bad at
       | distinguishing feet from other body parts?
       | 
       | In any case, well done! In North American sports, there's a push
       | to use a similar sort of system in baseball for calling
       | balls/strikes, I'd be curious to compare my judgement against the
       | computer system they're testing in some minor leagues.
        
         | truetaurus wrote:
         | If done right var could be awesome but it's flawed right now.
         | Also there is no more "we will give you the benefit of the
         | doubt". There needs to be a little leeway. About the rule:
         | someone suggested to state the rule somewhere so we do that
         | soon.
        
           | bl0b wrote:
           | I agree entirely.
           | 
           | At least the VAR people should admit that there is an
           | inherent margin of error in the technology (camera framerate,
           | image resolution, blur..), and offsides calls should only be
           | made when the result is outside that (somehow quantified)
           | margin of error.
        
         | samlittlewood wrote:
         | Any part of the body that can play the ball - so everything
         | except arms and hands.
        
         | awb wrote:
         | > My understanding is that the offside rule is based on where
         | the players' feet are, but based on this VAR is doing it based
         | off of any body part. Do I have the rule right?
         | 
         | Not quite. Head, body and feet all count.
         | 
         | https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules...
         | 
         | > A player is in an offside position if: any part of the head,
         | body or feet is in the opponents' half (excluding the halfway
         | line) and any part of the head, body or feet is nearer to the
         | opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second-last
         | opponent
         | 
         | > The hands and arms of all players, including the goalkeepers,
         | are not considered.
         | 
         | > A player is not in an offside position if level with the:
         | second-last opponent or last two opponents
        
       | analyst74 wrote:
       | Fun idea, I tried a few, and VAR is always wrong, is that the
       | point of the project, to show how bad they are?
        
         | truetaurus wrote:
         | That's up for debate of course. But generally I would say var
         | has been horrible
        
       | re wrote:
       | VAR is Video Assistant Referee, i.e. an off-field (human)
       | official that manually checks calls using instant replay:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_assistant_referee
       | 
       | I don't follow association football at all and was unfamiliar
       | with the term; based on the comments here I was guessing it was
       | maybe some sort of machine learning algorithm.
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | What is VAR? I thought it'd be some coding challenge about car,
       | let, const
       | 
       | It looks like it could mean Visual Automated Referee. Or Video
       | Assisted Referee
        
       | gabagool wrote:
       | What's the ratio of not offsides to offsides on the site? Going
       | through it, it seems like a ratio of 1:20. I know the goal of the
       | website is to show how VAR is broken, but there seems to be a lot
       | of bias in the uploading/presenting. It'd be cool if there was a
       | more even split in the scenarios presented.
        
         | bl0b wrote:
         | I think the problem is that VAR for offsides errs only in the
         | direction of call-things-offsides-that-shouldn't-be. I can't
         | think of a time where it gave a goal that I though should have
         | been called back, but so many times was a goal called back that
         | seems like it shouldn't have.
        
           | LanceH wrote:
           | It's actually better than it used to be though. I can't even
           | count the number of goals and breakaways that were called
           | back by the linesman because _surely_ that guy who is open by
           | 5 yards was offside.
           | 
           | The current interpretation of the rule appears to take "level
           | with" the 2nd to last defender to be a zone of infinitesimal
           | width. So having your body lined up with the defender's isn't
           | enough to be level with if a pinky finger is extended beyond
           | them. A player could have his entire torso behind the
           | defender and be offside if his arm or toe extends beyond the
           | defender. The defender could literally (by any reasonable
           | definition) be between the forward and the goal and it would
           | still be offside.
           | 
           | It's like they saw the NFL's ruling on what is a catch and
           | thought it was a contest.
           | 
           | I actually like VAR, because referees and linesmen preferred
           | to call back goals rather than risk an offside goal be
           | allowed. So it is progress, but they wrote the rule to be a
           | mechanical judgement, rather than a human one (as rugby
           | does).
        
       | dvt wrote:
       | This goes to show how absolutely _atrocious_ VAR is. Not only
       | does it detect arms[1] as  "offsides" in many cases, but in
       | others it's _blatantly_ wrong[2]. In [2], there 's at least 2
       | (potentially 3) Alaves players closer to the goal line than
       | Barca's offense.
       | 
       | [1] https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/offside-or-
       | not.a...
       | 
       | [2] https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/offside-or-
       | not.a...
        
         | vemv wrote:
         | VAR is just people, it's not like an algorithm is dictating the
         | results.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-15 23:00 UTC)