vorosmccracken.com

Just what the hell am I doing back in the vorosmccracken.com command bunker when I’m running all of these ratings and simulations?

Now I’m not going to bother pretending I know anything about the effects subtle tactical and formation changes have on the outcome of a match. That’s not what I do. I’m a numbers guy and that’s how the analysis is going to be done.

If you really don’t care what precisely is going on, but have looked over the ratings and decided that they seem reasonable enough to you, you might want to stop here. This post will be long and a bit technical, so if this kind of explanation doesn’t interest you then you don’t have to continue. [Read more →]

I have been battling the sort of computer problems no one who does what I do should ever have to face, and it appears I may very well have stemmed the tide in my favor for the moment. I’m going to sleep in about a half an hour…

…if I wake up tomorrow, power up my machine and it boots to where it’s supposed to instead of the ever dreaded BSOD, I will then immediately do the numbers on the upcoming Germany/Russia WC Qualifying mega-game that I had been planning for weeks. You’ll get sort of an idea how the ratings are used to predict the outcome of a match, and see what the limitations are and maybe a few ideas for future improvement (never said I had this perfectly figured out). [Read more →]

A discussion below has popped up about which confederations should have how many teams. Going to do some thinking out loud here and just see what happens.

To me there’s actually three main considerations: [Read more →]

Who’s in? Who’s out? Should Norway celebrate? How’s Alvaro’s bets looking right now? So many questions, answers to come.

The updated National Team Rankings can be found here. [Read more →]

Going to change up the format a little here because so much has happened. Will go through things region by region and note the important happenings. The nitty is certainly starting to become gritty now and this will be a very long post.

The updated National Team Rankings can be found here.

Full qualification chances can be found here. [Read more →]

Thanks for everyone’s patience. My computer difficulties continue to plague me, but I managed to get all my files onto another machine and set everything up. So 10,000 sims for all games played through August 31, 2009. [Read more →]

Sorry for the lack of an update. The super-intelligent fully autonomous supercomputer running this site and all of the stuff it produces is DOWN!!

And I can’t seem to fix it in a timely manner. I’m currently looking for a way to get the files off of it so I can get an update in while I find a way to repair or *gasp* replace it. Thanks for your patience. Hopefully I’ll get a qualification update done by Sunday.

Voros.

Egypt’s win at home over Rwanda is the last qualifier for another month, so let’s have a look see at how things are shaping up.

The updated National Team Rankings can be found here.

Full qualification chances can be found here. [Read more →]

I like to do keep tabs on my rating system this from time to time, always looking for ways to improve it. Since it appears most everybody took the Confederations cup quite seriously, why not have a look to see how the rating systems did in predicting the outcomes of games. [Read more →]

David writes in a request:

I was wondering if it would be possible for you retroactively to run simulations for the Confederations Cup before the last games were played in Group B. I realize how unlikely the U.S. advancing was, I’m just curious how many times it would have happened in your simulations. Was this a 1 in 100 thing? Or even more unlikely.

Thanks for writing in David. If I was selling Voros t-shirts, I’d send one out to you.

Anyway that’s a good question with implications involving two of my favorite subjects: statistics and philosophy. Anyway first the nuts and bolts. I re-ran the latest National Team rankings to include all result through June 20th. That way it would account for the stink from the US’s first two games and the surprise quality of Egypt’s first two. We dropped a few places down to 22nd, Egypt rose a few up to 42nd. Then I ran 10,000 simulations of the final two games in the group. The results: [Read more →]