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Very bad computer meltdown for me, but I’m back up and running now.

In about an hour I’ll have the probabilities up for the remainder of the tournament. No more sims, I can solve everything directly from here on out now. I’ll also list the expected scores and percentages for each of the Round of 16 Matches.

I know that one will have started already, but it was the best I could do with the hardware failure.

A little teaser: 63% of the time, the ultimate winner is projected to be one of only three teams. The other 13 teams must share the remaining 37%.

For all of you around the world who heard a very loud scream emanating from the general direction of Phoenix, Arizona at around 12:00 PM EST, I apologize. I’m pretty sure it won’t happen again (though it would be nice).

Every group has now finished the first two rounds of games, and now comes the final game of the group stages, and for half the teams their last game of the tournament.

Let’s get all the updated numbers out of the way first. The National Team Rankings have now been updated. An important note for these is that the numbers are capable of moving more at this time than any other point in a four year cycle. Not only do these games count more than any other in the system, but they are also the only inter confederation matches with a high importance rating (besides the final qualifiers). So not only can the ratings move for the teams playing, but teams not in the tournament can also move some depending on how well (or poorly) the teams from their region do. The only major change of note is that the North Koreans have now slipped behind New Zealand as the lowest rated side in the tournament. [Read more →]

Expect a ratings and simulation update for the World Cup in the next few hours.

1-1 Mexico – South Africa
0-0 France – Uruguay

Before getting into the sims, it’s worth pointing out the basics here. Because of the two draws, 5 points is a magic number now. A win and a draw in the next two games for any of the four teams in Group A puts them through to the knockout round. Considering the closeness in quality of the top three teams in the group and the host country being the other team, advancement of any kind by any method is probably something any would sign up for in a heartbeat.

Under Domenech, France has been a fairly low scoring team and this tends to cause a lot more draws than normal. This makes them a team that tends to be stronger in knockout rounds than in group stages since the winning team gets more than twice the value of a draw in the group stages. Theoretically Mexico have hurt themselves by only taking one point from the hosts, but hosting really is greatly beneficial for whatever the reason.

There’s very little change in the sim results, and most of it is within the range of random chance. However the 6% increase in the chances South Africa has to advance and the balance of the 6% decrease for Mexico probably is meaningful. Mexico’s expected points from this one was 1.78 while South Africa’s was 0.94. France’s was 1.46 and Uruguay’s was 1.24. So while South Africa only got a slightly greater number of points than expected, all three of their opponents got less with Mexico leading the bunch.

So obviously there will be bigger movement in the odds to come, but it’s nice to have the tournament finally here.

Alright, tomorrow is the big opening between Mexico and the host country. Here is how the National Team rankings handicap each match in the group stage. The way this is done is by separating each game into 33 equal scoring chances for each team, and their chances for each would obviously be the predicted goals scored divided by 33. From there it’s fairly easy to use the Binomial Distribution to predict who wins and loses. [Read more →]

Well this Friday the big shindig starts in South Africa with the host country facing Mexico in the opening match. And so in anticipation of that, here are the final set of numbers before the tournament gets under way. [Read more →]

It’s now May of 2010 and that means the big shindig is almost here. So to kick off the run-up to the start of the World Cup, the most obvious place is an update of the National Team Rankings. Since last November, most of the International Matches played have been friendlies, though the African Nations Cup was completed (congratulations Egypt) and some Asian Cup qualifiers have been played. [Read more →]

Okay so now we know exactly which teams will play each other in the Group Stages and where the teams that advance will go in the bracket.

How has that changed things? [Read more →]

Here it is, which teams will play which teams.

WC 2010 Draw

A good draw for my team, but we’re capable of losing to anyone, so no point in getting too excited.

I’ll try and run some sims as soon as possible.