If you’re sick of always losing in the basketball game H-O-R-S-E, you might want to spend less time practicing those behind-the-back three-pointers and more quality time with your calculator. That’s because if you do the math, you’ll find it’s sometimes better to shoot three-pointers instead of layups, or better to try 20-footers instead of free-throws. And if you want to live on the edge, you’ve actually got a 1-in-4 chance to win some games by shooting all half-court shots. The Count built a model with Ben Blatt of the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective—an organization of Harvard students and faculty—that determined the best strategy to win games. The analysis isn’t perfect because it has to assume a few things, starting with both players being equally skilled. It also guesses how good each player is—we assumed there’s a 90% chance to make a layup; 65% to make a free throw; 55% to make a 10-footer; 45% to make a 20-footer; 30% to make a three-pointer; and 6.7% to make it from half-court. The model only works if you assume that each player continually shoots from the same spot—not counting when they’d have to match their opponent’s shot—because otherwise there’d be infinite potential conclusions. The results show that if you go first and your initial shot is always a 10-foot jumper while your opponent’s initial shot is always a free throw, you’ll win 57.7% of the time. If you shoot all three-pointers and your opponent tries all layups, you’ll actually win 92.2% of games. If you want to be wild and shoot all from half court, you’ll win just 1.5% of the time if your opponent is shooting 20-footers. But if your opponent is lazy and shooting all layups, you can chuck it from half-court and win 28.2% of games. — Wall Street Journal