That's a pretty stupid study. Have they done this for other games such as Halo or Team Fortress 2? If not, than it's nothing to ponder about.

 Hmm isn't it 10% then?? since one side go up 5% the other go down 5%

55% against 45%

oh well who cares really??

If they're correct, that's a 22% (not %P, %) higher change of winning if you play red, than if you play blue.

However, some studies I did toghether with my friend (in Runescape, and a few other games, mostly free) showed that if you have the ability to change teams, always change team, as that team wins about 80% of the time.

That's why this is bound to even out. If 60% of the wins are on the red team, "bad" players start chosing red, so they can win.

I'm sure that this also goes in waves, so that in 3 months from now, blue could be even in the same game.

The way I figured it...if Red wins 55 game, and Blue wins 45, then red wins 10 more games than Blue. 10 is 22.22~ percent of 45. So actually, Red will win 22 percent more games than Blue.

@Montana: the article also mentioned studies that showed that color seems to have a factor in sports, such as wrestling.  But YES, they do need to study more games.

Damn I have forgotten most of the math I learned in school :)

so thats why i lost on UT the other day, bacause i was on the blue team.

This study doesn't (and really can't) take into effect all of the other variables in playing the game. Obviously all the players aren't equal in terms of skill, and it could very well have been chance that the red teams won more often than the blue.

Also:

"the reason was most likely that the color red may act as a psychological distractor for men, possibly because men flush and turn red when they're angry."

Is that a joke? I honestly can't see how this entire study actually happened now. The whole thing seems way too fake.

And the comment about wearing red in a 1-on-1 sport and winning more often... I completely doubt that wearing red has any significant change. When I see someone wearing red I don't get distracted or psychologically messed up. I'll leave that to the bulls.

It depends on how well done the study is. When doing a study with many different participents a good study wil try to match similar players. So, they are going to match teams with similar skills and similar factors when doing the statistics. They are gong to look at many differnt skills and try and find confounders (these are factors that make it look like a certain trait may have an effect but it does not. An example would be looking at the death rate in some state. It may be high and researchers would go wtf you are more likely to die living here! But, after looking closer, the population of this state has a higher number of elderly folks than other states, thus it would be a confounding factor [since its just more people dying from old age rather than some factor within the state]). Also, they would be using a statistics package. The statistics will look at if there is a significant difference in both teams. IF the statistics say that there is it means its highly unlikely that this is due to chance (usually 5% or less. also, this is if the study is done well). The larger the sample size the better the statistics.

But, remember the methodology for the study and the team interpereting the results are what truly matters. No matter what the statistics say, if the study is carried out poorly the results will not be conclusive. Also, they will prolly do more tests. One study does not an answer make. Remember,in science a correct experiment should have similar results even when done more than once by different people.