An important thing to notice in the RCF definition (Table 1) is that the clients can reason about how long they predict they have to act. In particular, if there is an opponent nearby, there is a danger of losing the ball before being able to pass or shoot it. In this situation, it is to the passer's advantage to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible.
This priority is manifested in the RCFs in two ways: (i) in Step 4 of Table 1, teammates to whom the client cannot pass immediately are eliminated from consideration; and (ii) in Step 6, the client kicks the ball away (or shoots) rather than dribbling. When a player is between the ball and the teammate to which it wants to pass, it must move out of the ball's path before passing. Since this action takes time, an opponent often has the opportunity to get to the ball before it can be successfully released. Thus, in Step 4, when there is an opponent nearby the RCFs only consider passing to players to whom the client can pass immediately. The concept of nearby could be the learned class of positions from which the opponent could steal the ball. For the purposes of this paper, ``within 10m'' is an empirically acceptable approximation. As mentioned above, this concept is not purely reactive: the positions of opponents that are outside an agent's field of view are remembered [2].
Similarly, the point of dribbling the ball (kicking the ball a small amount in a certain direction and staying with it) is to keep the ball for a little longer until a good pass becomes available or until the player is in a good position to shoot. However, if there is an opponent nearby, dribbling often allows the opponent time to get to the ball. In this situation, as indicated in Step 6 of Table 1, the player should kick the ball forward (or shoot) rather than dribbling.
The ability to reason about how much time is available for action is an important component of the RCFs and contributes significantly to their success in game situations (see Section 4).