Momentum-stopping: Effects on performance

Does success breed success? Psychological momentum theory suggests that past achievements might influence future performance. However, distinguishing between psychological and strategic momentum — where a player's effort shifts based on relative position — is challenging. In this paper, using a novel dataset from professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive matches, I focus on technical timeouts. These timeouts don't affect player position but may disrupt psychological momentum. I find that a winning [losing] team with significant momentum sees a 13 [11.7] percentage points increased chance of losing [winning] the following round after calling for such a timeout. This shows that psychological momentum significantly affects performance and that timeouts can reset the momentum.