USCL Eastern Division: Playoff Hunt

There are three weeks to go in the USCL regular season. What are the chances that any particular team will be in playoff contention?

Let's assume for the moment that all teams are equally matched, and that all teams have an equal chance to win, draw, or lose a match with every other team. Therefore, each match can have three possible results.

In the Eastern Division of the USCL, there are twelve matches left and therefore there are 3^12 (three to the twelfth power) possible results (in terms of match results). That's 531, 441 possibilities.

If we make the criterion for "possibly in the playoffs" to be tied for fourth or better, then the percentages below indicate what a team's chances to possibly be in the playoffs.

100.00% - New England
99.55% - Boston
98.27% - New York
74.75% - Baltimore
41.28% - Manhattan
10.32% - New Jersey
3.05% - Philadelphia
1.21% - Carolina

Now, if we take game points (the first tiebreaker) into consideration, that increases the number of possibilities to 9^12 power, which is actually 531,441 times bigger than the last time. Since the simulation presented here took about 4 seconds to run on my computer, the code for including game points is about 50% more complex (increasing time to completion by about 50%), it would take over 553 days for the simulation to run!

I think I'll wait for the actual results.

Anyone interested in me doing this for the Western Division too?