Let's try and get 1,000,000 replies to this post

On the amateur scholar side I find it fascinating how much we don't know about development of European languages, pre medieval. We're pretty much certain over here that toponyms and names lacking vowels, especially the short one like "krk", are very old. So it went like Liburni/Delmatae no-vowel word to Greco/Latin vowel word and then back to no-vowel with Slavs. Fortunately for us Greeks and Romans knew how to write ...
 
Today is the anniversary of one of my all time favorite moments in sports history ... US beat the USSR in Lake Placid in 1980. Turned me from someone who liked hockey into a big time fan of the sport

Might fire up Miracle tonight
 
The "Miracle on Ice"!

The Soviet Union had won the gold medal in five of the six previous Winter Olympic Games!


This was also the only edition in which the Netherlands participated. :--)

A historical performance. We became -thanks to Dutch Canadians!- 9th out of 12 nations, above countries like Western Germany and Norway.
Netherlands
23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png
1–10
(1–2, 0–2, 0–6)
23px-Flag_of_Canada_%28Pantone%29.svg.png
Canada
Netherlands
23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png
4–17
(1–8, 1–7, 2–2)
23px-Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg.png
Soviet Union
Japan
22px-Flag_of_Japan_%281870%E2%80%931999%29.svg.png
3–3
(3–1, 0–1, 0–1)
23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png
Netherlands
Netherlands
23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png
5–3
(3–1, 2–1, 0–1)
23px-Flag_of_Poland.svg.png
Poland
Finland
23px-Flag_of_Finland.svg.png
10–3
(2–1, 2–1, 6–1)
23px-Flag_of_the_Netherlands.svg.png
Netherlands

Final ranking:

1​
United States
2​
Soviet Union
3​
Sweden
4​
Finland
5​
Czechoslovakia
6​
Canada
7​
Poland
8​
Romania
9​
Netherlands
10​
West Germany
11​
Norway
12​
Japan
 
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For the sake of curiosity, are betting odds available? Let's compare Miracle on Ice to the 2014 Murder in the Estádio Mineirão, which was 1 out of a 500 event.

Edit : I found this

www.actionnetwork.com

What Would USA's Moneyline Have Been in 1980 Miracle on Ice? | The Action Network

Check out Steve Petrella's story about what the betting odds could have been for Team USA's upset over the USSR in the 1980 Miracle on Ice.
www.actionnetwork.com www.actionnetwork.com

Chin and Granat said in an email that their Monte Carlo simulations would have put the United States’ chances to win that game somewhere in the 7% and 14% range,
Click to expand...

I don't understand hockey that much, what I'm wondering about is the exact score chance and not win chance
 
It actually goes on from there to say the number I c/p-ed up

A Monte Carlo simulation run by Carlton Chin and Jay Granat in 2010 gave the U.S. 1,000-1 odds to win Gold entering the tournament.

But they told The Action Network those odds should probably have been closer to 17-1 based on what we ended up seeing through the first five games from the Americans.
Click to expand...

The latter number is relevant because betting coefficient, today, is set in real time and of course dependent on the history of scores.
The first number could be applicable in case the USA vs USSR game was first on the tournament.
 
One thing to note, at the time no pros were allowed in the Olympics, so the US team was college players. The Soviet team were technically amateurs, but in reality they were a team laden with NHL level talent. I do not know much about soccer, but picture a team of 21 year-old college students that just formed a team a few months before the Olympics versus essentially a professional team that had been playing together for years
 
From wikipedia

The Soviet Union entered the Lake Placid games as the heavy favorite, having won four consecutive gold medals dating back to the 1964 games. In the four Olympics following their 1960 bronze-medal finish at Squaw Valley, Soviet teams had gone 27–1–1 (wins-losses-ties) and outscored their opponents 175–44.[10] In head-to-head matchups against the United States, the cumulative score over that period was 28–7.[11] The Soviet team had not lost a game in Olympic play since 1968.

The Soviets were led by legendary players in world ice hockey, such as Boris Mikhailov (a top line right winger and team captain), Vladislav Tretiak (the consensus best goaltender in the world at the time), the speedy and skilled Valeri Kharlamov, and talented, dynamic players such as defenseman Viacheslav Fetisov and forwards Vladimir Krutov and Sergei Makarov. From that team, Tretiak, Kharlamov, Makarov, and Fetisov were eventually enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Many of the Soviet players had gained attention in the Summit Series eight years before and, in contrast to the American players, were de facto professionals with long histories of international play,[12] employed by industrial firms or military organizations for the sole purpose of playing hockey on their organization's team.[13] Western nations protested the Soviet Union's use of full-time athletes, as they were forced to use amateur (mainly college) players due to the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) amateur-only policy.[14][15] The situation even led to Canadian withdrawal from the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, but the IOC did not change the rules until the late 1980s.[16][17][18]


Edit for more info:

In exhibitions that year, Soviet club teams went 5–3–1 against National Hockey League (NHL) teams and, a year earlier, the Soviet national team had routed the NHL All-Stars 6–0 to win the Challenge Cup.
 
Ofc, but team USA already played (and won) strong teams and favourites on the tournament.

I don't really appreciate the 1 to 1000 chance because that depicts your team as total cripples. You watched the game, so you tell me, if it repeated every day for three years would that be the sole time USA wins?
 
Zare said:
Ofc, but team USA already played (and won) strong teams and favourites on the tournament.

I don't really appreciate the 1 to 1000 chance because that depicts your team as total cripples. You watched the game, so you tell me, if it repeated every day for three years would that be the sole time USA wins?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think the US coach said something like if we played them 10 times, we would probably lose the other 9, I think that is generous, I think if they played 100 games the US would be lucky to win more than 5. They had played 2 weeks earlier and the USSR won 10-3
 
Zare said:
I don't really appreciate the 1 to 1000 chance because that depicts your team as total cripples. You watched the game, so you tell me, if it repeated every day for three years would that be the sole time USA wins?
Click to expand...
Nah. Analytics can't take into account a lot of the other stuff going on around the ice, including just the USSR shitting the bed the way they did in that tournament.
 
5% seems like a reasonable chance, you know stars combine and you win :) 1/1000 is cosmic event tho.

LC, in modern times I bet the worldwide betting system keeps track of everything and adapts coefficients. I presume if game is on Monday and the fact that a player is doing teammate's wife goes public on Sunday the coefficient for the team would drop before the game.

The thing is in that Brazil game some guy bet on the score and won a ticket with 500x coefficient on it. So I wondered if someone did the same for this game but I'm unable to find any evidence apart from people hypothetically speaking about going back and betting on it.
 
Zare said:
The thing is in that Brazil game some guy bet on the score and won a ticket with 500x coefficient on it. So I wondered if someone did the same for this game but I'm unable to find any evidence apart from people hypothetically speaking about going back and betting on it.
Click to expand...
I mean, sports books in the US probably weren't keeping close track of the Olympic hockey tournament at the time.
 
LooseCannon said:
I mean, sports books in the US probably weren't keeping close track of the Olympic hockey tournament at the time.
Click to expand...
Most likely not .. at the time hockey was a very regional sport in the US. That game, just my opinion, was the start of hockey becoming more popular nationally. They game was not even broadcast live, the replay was broadcast about 3 hours after the game ended. In pre internet days, no one had a clue what the score was unless they were at the game or got a phone call from someone who knew the score.
 
I bought these knitting needle end stoppers on Amazon, for no real reason other than I found them amusing.
Rock, paper, scissors obviously. Right?
IMG_20210222_192319.jpg

Not to the Boyfriend - to him they immediately suggest:
Hello:

IMG_20210222_192429-11.jpg
Wanker:

IMG_20210222_192446.jpg
And finally,
Oop thine!

IMG_20210222_192511.jpg

Of course they do :lol:
 
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