Decoding the mechanisms of the Hattrick football manager game using Bayesian network structure learning

• First academic study modelling the mechanisms of the Hattrick game-engine. • Builds Bayesian networks via structure learning and domain knowledge. • Inference capability rivals top community-developed Hattrick versions. • Visualises decision impact to support in-game strategic choices. • Shares data and models to support future research and development. Hattrick is a free web-based probabilistic football manager game with over 200,000 users competing for titles at national and international levels. Launched in Sweden in 1997 as part of an MSc project, the game’s slow-paced design has fostered a loyal community, with users remaining active for decades. Hattrick’s game-engine mechanics are partially hidden, and users have attempted to decode them with incremental success over the years. Rule-based, statistical and machine learning models have been developed to aid this effort and are widely used by the community, but have not been formally evaluated in the scientific literature. This study is the first to explore Hattrick using structure learning techniques and Bayesian networks, integrating expert knowledge with data to develop models that simulate and explain the game-engine. We assess the effectiveness of structure learning algorithms in relation to knowledge-based structures, and publicly share a fully specified Bayesian network model that matches the performance of top models used by the Hattrick community. We further demonstrate how analysis extends beyond prediction by providing a visual representation of dependencies between features, and using the optimal model for in-game decision-making. To support future research, we make all data, graphical structures, and models publicly available online.