in reply to hash deref confusion: Intermediate Perl

But, in the next line, "@$self" is syntax for dereferencing an array reference, not a hash reference!

The construct you refer to is called a 'hash slice' -- see perldata#slices.

It assignes the 4 values derived from spliting $STANDINGS{$name} (or the four 0s from the constant) to the the four keys: 

qw[ wins places shows losses ]

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That one line is (mostly) equivalent to:

$self->{wins}   = $STANDINGS[ 0 ] || 0;
$self->{places} = $STANDINGS[ 1 ] || 0;
$self->{shows}  = $STANDINGS[ 2 ] || 0;
$self->{looses} = $STANDINGS[ 3 ] || 0;

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