Fire the fireworks, dance the dance and hide the slums - it's the start of the World Cup today!
Of course, you already know what is (probably) going to happen, thanks to our World Cup simulator. You may need to slightly adjust those expectations, because today we've updated the odds within our model. In this episode we're going to go through the movers and the shakers within the odds.
Firstly, we are going to see which group stage matches (which we can directly find odds for) have seen the biggest shifts since we initially calculated the probabilities on the 30th of May. Below are the 10 matches that see the biggest change:
Match (Team A vs. Team B) |
Team A % (change) |
Draw % (change) |
Team B % (change) |
Russia vs. Egypt |
44.66% (-6.99%) |
30.12% (+2.27%) |
25.22% (+4.72%) |
South Korea vs. Mexico |
19.86% (-3.83%) |
27.05% (-1.32%) |
53.09% (+5.15%) |
Peru vs. Denmark |
29.78% (+4.10%) |
30.25% (+0.84%) |
39.97% (-4.94%) |
Croatia vs. Nigeria |
55.83% (+4.84%) |
26.58% (-1.43%) |
17.59% (-3.41%) |
Russia vs. Saudi Arabia |
67.02% (-4.75%) |
22.99% (+2.62%) |
9.98% (+2.13%) |
Germany vs. Sweden |
66.82% (+4.08%) |
20.92% (-2.03%) |
12.26% (-2.05%) |
Brazil vs. Costa Rica |
80.54% (+3.65%) |
14.43% (-1.63%) |
5.03% (-2.03%) |
Costa Rica vs. Serbia |
20.36% (-3.51%) |
29.52% (-0.11%) |
50.12% (+3.62%) |
Uruguay vs. Russia |
41.88% (+3.50%) |
30.40% (-0.03%) |
27.72% (-3.47%) |
Nigeria vs. Iceland |
37.54% (+3.14%) |
30.98% (+0.25%) |
31.49% (-3.39%) |
Nigeria see their chances fall against Croatia but increase against Iceland. Costa Rica's chances have declined a bit against both Brazil and Serbia. And Brazil aren't the only tournament favourites to increase their chanecs - Germany have also seen an increase in their match against Sweden.
Coefficients
We use a 'coefficient' to deem which team is the stronger of two for the knockout rounds. These are just each team's odds of winning the tournament. We have updated these odds, and converted them to probabilities of winning to see if there's been a big shift anywhere. Below are the top 12 teams:
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I'm genuinely baffled as to why Russia are even in the top 12 - again, a big home advantage (plus a helpful group draw) seems to have boosted their chances.
Simulations
Recently we unveiled the results of running the simulator 3,000 times to get an idea of each team's tournament chances according to the model. We've now re-ran those simulations with the updated odds. Below are the full results:
Elsewhere, it's unsurprising that Egypt's chances of qualifying from Group A have increased at the expense of Russia.
Summary
Overall, the big chances are:
- Brazil have emerged as the sole favourite for the tournament
- Russia are less likely to do well than before
Due to the nature of how the model works, the odds can't really be updated once the tournament begins, so this is the final update using the current system. Time permitting, I will be giving later updates using the model.
Needless to say, the page where you can run the model for yourself has been updated with the values from this article.
Anyway... it's Christmas time for football fans - just breathe it in! I hope your sweepstake team does better than our model says it will.