This is the most important post in the thread. All you need to know is that Reina is slightly better than Southall (relatively) and an average 16 year old British schoolboy is much better at this than DN will ever be. I'm not being disparaging to DN, but in the UK at school we typically play football every available opportunity for about 10 years.

O RLY? and your assumption is what, that American's don't watch soccer?

This is the truth.

this completely ignores the fact that the average 16 year old boy is not a grown ass man.

Americans, taking a penalty in soccer can be compared to something like keeping 1-5 65-70 mph pitches in baseball in play. Meaning the batter has to get bat on ball and prevent it from going in foul territory. I'm sure most people with any hand-eye coordination could do this.

Actually I would take an average 16 year old Englishman over DN anyday; even though I believe DN is +ev in the bet.

naw man, hitting a baseball is way harder than you think. The "average" person who hasn't played any baseball probably couldn't do that.

I first went into a batting cage when I was 14 and I could hit 70-75mph balls about 50% of time after like 5 minutes in the cage. I don't men I BLASTED them, but I could keep them in play. But I played cricket which does give me a lot of advantage.

And I mean someone who has played atleast some form of hand-eye coordinated ball game like cricket, tennis, badminton, squash etc. Picking up a baseball bat in cage and facing a 65mph ball after even like 10 minutes in the cage would not be tooo difficult to make 13% of the shots.

they should probably be able to bunt atleast unless they have never had a ball coming at them that fast and are afraid of it. it probably is a bit more difficult, but certainly someone who played up to the age of 15 should be able to do it.

obv bunting wouldn't be allowed. yeah if someone played baseball (Cricket too I guess) they should be able to do that pretty easily, but if not I think it would be pretty damn challenging for them.

[QUOTE=AnfieldRoad;13577992]Hi.

I want to add two things:

1. Daniel is the professional gambler of the two, so I think the fact that he should be way better at appraising his edges in various proposition spots should be accounted for.

Have you seen white men can't jump ?

Sometimes if you loose you win and sometimes if you win you loose

This is kind of a circular definition really, so it's pointless to argue.

All I will say is that way less than 50% of U.S. males could do this. And this figure might hold for slow-pitch softball as well.

Dude, I still have no idea what you are talking about. Are you saying 33% of penalty shots go in? At what level, and who vs. who, some poofter vs a pro keeper? Because AFAIK it's way more than 33% at all levels of competition.

http://usasoccer.blogspot.com/2007/0...1999-2006.html

Do you guys even watch Football? Barely anyone blasts penalties. Most players just put it into the corners with the side of the foot. This technique is known as "passing." Penalties have nothing to do with how hard you hit it, it's all about placement. Reina, Buffon and every other goalie in the world cannot save a ball hit into the side netting unless done by a 5 year old. It's hilarious how awful just about every NVG thread is. No wonder everyone talking about Reina/football in this thread is no where to be seen in SE.

Good players are basically automatic (elite players like CR, RVP, Kaka are hitting well over 90% conversion) and if DN trained a little he'd be a favourite to get 2+ in.

Not bothering to reading the entire thread, but after reading the article, my thoughts:

Anyone who says Negreanu easily wins this bet has not played that much soccer (I'm American and proud of it, so that's what I'm going to call it). And anyone who says that penalty kicks are all guesswork clearly is not a goalkeeper (or at least a good one).

Coming from the perspective of an all-city goalkeeper in high school (the only athletic brag I've got), I can tell you that it's relatively easy to save a random person's penalty kick. You just follow their hips. Assuming Negreau doesn't have much power -- and who's arguing otherwise -- Reina should win this bet.

In the end though, I voted that Reina has an edge, not that he wins easily. If Negreanu practices for a few weeks and just toe-balls the hell out of it, there's a chance one could get by Reina. But Reina certainly has the edge over five attempts. Many great goalkeepers have saved more than 50% of all PK attempts against them in a given season -- and that's against premiere athletes. Negreanu is not of that caliber.

Wow. My first post on 2+2 and it's about Negreanu's soccer skills. Seems about right.

Also: Also, only 40% of PKs taken against me were successful. And I am not even good enough to play D-I college ball, much less professionally. And again that was against people who actually played soccer, not a random like Daniel.

OK this is getting kind of stupid.

There are good arguments on both sides IMO but I'm sticking with my contention that DN sucks if he can't win this ESPECIALLY if he enforces the rule against moving forward off the end line too early.

But the only way to find out is to get it done.

its going to be epic either way.

I bet you also notice how players like Kaka can change corner after they hit the ball by twisting the foot if they see the keeper is going to that direction, thats why it sometimes looks very easy to score when they do it. Theres a lot more that good players do than just pass it in one corner

He was just plain fat at the time.

The bet would be interesting if DN had to score 2 or 3 PK.
Even again one of the best goalies, I can't see how he can fail 5 11 meters shot. And I have been a GK for 11 years and played for regional selections.
Shaking liberos who can't deal with pressure and are not used to shoot still managed to score against me in shootouts, just opening their right foot and putting the ball in the bottom right corner.

It is relevant, and yes as often as not the keeper saves becasue the pens aren't good enough.

Also your multipointball analogy doesn't wash. Basketball has no keeper. If the challenge was can Daniel hit the ball into an empty net, then yes I see it, but this is football, there is a moving reacting thinking person in the way to stop him. Why try to compare it to a sport that ios irrelebvant anyway? We are talking about the biggest sport in the world, surely you can make your point on football alone?

Again, in a match, the taker has no mulligan, he has to get it right first time, and caution/fear of the miss will often mean he puts it too close to the keeper, Daniel doesn't have to do this, he can aim for the postage stamp every time and has five goes to get it right, compared to a normal pen takers one time chance.

You don't require any fitness to take two steps and hit the ball. And hitting the gym is a total irrelvance, fitness or not. Hitting the gym, but not hitting a football = total failure. As it is, Daniel said he was good enough for schools select when he was young.

No, it was a terrible analogy. A serve has nothing like the success rate of a pen in professional play. Otherwise 80%+ of points in tennis would just be aces.

+ a million