The Beautiful Pool

There is still one week until the first game and that is lots of time to get your Beautiful Pool entries to me before the deadline at midnight on 10 June.

But, on the other hand…

It’s been 3 weeks since I first made the entry forms available for download and quite a few of you haven’t made your choices yet. The pressure is starting to build. Don’t wait too long and then come crying to me if you miss the deadline.

I know what you are thinking…

You are wondering what Nate Silver’s World Cup model is predicting. Unfortunately, the results of his predictions for each of the Group Stage matches are behind a paywall. Fortunately for you, I paid to have a peek, and here’s what he says.

Each row corresponds to one of the Group stage matches. Here is what the columns mean. The “Group” column is obvious, and the “Date” is the date on which the match is scheduled. The 3rd and 5th columns shows the identifier for the teams playing in the match. The one that Nate thinks has the best chance of winning is in column 3, “Team”. The other is the “Opponent”. The 4th column, “p(Win)”, shows the percent probability that Team will beat Opponent. The 6th column, “p(Win)2”, is the probability that the Opponent will win. In each row, the probabilities in p(Win) and p(Win)2 sum to less than 100% and the difference is the probability that the game will end in a tie. I hope that helps.

For some of you, that may be just what you need to make your picks. Others might be overwhelmed with too much detailed info. Still others are probably saying, “What is this crap?”.

Whatever.

Just remember to send your entries to me before the deadline.