Expert advantage in making judgments about the outcomes of sporting events is well-documented. It is not known, however, whether experts have an advantage in the absence of objective information, such as the current score or the relative skill of players. Participants viewed 5-second clips of modern Olympic fencing matches and selected the likely winners. Participants’ predictions were compared with the actual winners to compute accuracy. Study 1 revealed small but significant differences between the accuracy of experts and novices, but it was not clear what fencing behaviors informed participants’ judgments. Rasch modeling was used to select stimuli for Study 2, in which fencing-naïve participants rated the gracefulness, competitiveness, and confidence of competitors before selecting winners. By using Rasch modeling to develop the stimuli set, fencing-naïve participants were able to identify winners at above chance rates. The results further indicate that in the absence of concrete information, competitiveness and confidence may be used as a heuristic for the selection of winning athletes.