<Abstract>
This research was conducted to examine the factors that decidedthe games in the Water Polo World Championship held Perth in 1991.
Especially, the objective of this research was to compare as wellas examine the content of the games that were both won and lost byone point score difference.
The outlines of the results were as follows :
l) Compared with an average score of the games with amore-than-two-point margin, that of the games with a narrow marginwas held low due to comparable team strength among the teams. Inaddition, there was a tendency that the late of the score due to thesuperiority state (Exclusion) increased.
2) The transition of the score margin between teams was classifiedinto five patterns. The largest pattern in number was anattack-first-manage-to-win pattern and aclose-contest-from-the-beginning-to-the end pattern turned out to bethe second largest one.
3) There was no significant difference in terms of the time spentattacking, the number of attack, the number of shots or the rate ofsuccessful shots between a winning team and a defeated one.
4) The rate with which major fouls are involved turned out to behigh in the games with a slight margin as a factor that controlledthe flow of the game. Furthermore, there were some cases in whichoffense and defense in the superiority state (at Exclusion) decidedthe outcome of the games with a narrow margin.