Why are most table tennis matches near coin-flips?
If you watch our predictions, you'll notice most favourites sit around 55-65%, not 80-90%. That's not the model being timid — it's the sport.
Tightly matched fields
The high-volume leagues (Setka Cup, the Liga Pro circuits) pit professionals of similar level against each other, many times a week. When skill gaps are small, outcomes are genuinely close to coin-flips — and an honest model says so.
Why we don't inflate it
We could make predictions look more confident, but they'd be wrong more often. Calibration means a stated 60% really wins about 60% of the time. A model that screamed 85% on a coin-flip would score worse, not better — see our Brier scores on the track record.
Where confidence is real
When a true mismatch shows up — a top player against a struggling one — the probability does climb. The point is that it climbs because the matchup earns it, not because we wanted a bolder-looking number.