Psychological Momentum in Best-of-x Series: Evidence from Esports

Student: Dmitriy Kaminskiy

Educational Programme: Joint HSE-NES Undergraduate Program in Economics (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2024

Untraditional sports disciplines such as electronic sports have high potential for testing hypotheses from regular sports. This research paper studies the impact of win/loss on athletes’ psychology and following performance. This paper analyses a sample of 10105 matches played in popular esports discipline Counter-Strike:Global Offensive to determine if psychological momentum exists and estimate it. As a result this paper finds evidence for the existence of the effect, but big differences in hypotheses testing results do not allow for quantitative estimation of the effect. This paper also finds an effect that has value outside of the chosen topic: «Favorites win the second game of the series more often than first»

Student Theses at HSE must be completed in accordance with the University Rules and regulations specified by each educational programme.

Summaries of all theses must be published and made freely available on the HSE website.

The full text of a thesis can be published in open access on the HSE website only if the authoring student (copyright holder) agrees, or, if the thesis was written by a team of students, if all the co-authors (copyright holders) agree. After a thesis is published on the HSE website, it obtains the status of an online publication.

Student theses are objects of copyright and their use is subject to limitations in accordance with the Russian Federation’s law on intellectual property.

In the event that a thesis is quoted or otherwise used, reference to the author’s name and the source of quotation is required.

Search all student theses