Random

Where it comes from

The noise floor. Included in tournaments so that everything else has something meaningless to be measured against.

How it plays

Random is not a strategy, it is a control, and its usefulness is in what it exposes about the strategies that play it. It has no memory, no intent and no consistency, so nothing it does can be read, punished or rewarded in any way that changes its behaviour.

It scores mediocre pay-offs against almost everybody, which is exactly what should happen. It cannot build the mutual co-operation that carries reciprocators to a high total, and it does not defect consistently enough to strip the naive the way a committed defector does. Half a plan is worse than either whole one.

What it does do is cause trouble for strategies that assume a pattern exists. A reciprocator facing Random ends up mirroring noise. A grudge-holder ends up punishing it for a coin flip and never stopping. Neither of those is Random winning; it is Random being a hard surface to model.

As a football side it is genuinely unpredictable and genuinely unreliable, in that order of usefulness. Nobody can prepare for it, including itself, and no run of form means anything. Being unreadable turns out to be worth something, just not very much.

In this league

Fluxton Rovers of Fluxton play Random. That being unreadable is worth something, though probably not as much as having a plan. They have not played yet this season.