World cup 2022 final results
The moment of truth.
Did we win?
After all the statistics, graphs, and calculations, did we win?
We beat 87% of all 221 521 other players.
Each one of the three strategies performed similarly, but there were some differences. You can find a full set of predictions at the bottom of the blog.
Recap
In the previous blogs we have created three different strategies:
- Predict the most common outcome overall, meaning 1–0 or 0–1 only
- Predict the most likely outcome according to a probability density function
- Predict the outcome with the highest expected value
Let’s see how many points we gained exactly.
We can gain points in three categories:
- Match predictions
- Placements
- Top scorer of the entire tournament
We will look at the points for match predictions first.
Match prediction totals:
- Strategy 1, most common: 311 points
- Strategy 2, pdf: 317 points
- Strategy 3, EV: 305
The total expected value including the “match of the day” is 317.2, all strategies ended really close.
Ironically, the strategy using the expected value ended up being the furthest away.
The biggest gap occurred during the quarter-finals when a tie occurred for Croatia vs. Brazil and Netherlands vs. Argentina and Portugal lost to Morocco. All of these were unlikely according to our statistics and resulted in very few points.
In the graph above we see the cumulative sum of the expected value and the total points acquired for each strategy.
Placement totals:
All strategies use the same predictions for placement totals: order by FIFA rating, letting the higher rating always knock out the lower rating.
We already calculated the placement totals for the group stage and round of 16 in a previous blog which came out to 118 points.
For the quarter-finals, we predicted the following:
Six of the eight countries predicted to reach the quarter-finals did so, accumulating 60 points.
For the semi-finals:
Two of the four countries predicted to reach the semi-finals did so, accumulating 20 points.
And the finals:
None of the countries placed correctly according to our predictions in the finals, yielding no points.
Top scorer
The last one of the extra predictions is the top scorer, we did not make a prediction for this, but just as with the “match of the day” points, we will estimate our chances and take a few points.
There are 30 points available for a correct prediction, let’s say we have about a one in ten chance of getting it correct, resulting in 3 points.
All extra predictions together
Below is an overview of all points from the extra predictions.
Total points for the entire tournament
- Strategy 1, most common: 311 + 201 = 512 points
- Strategy 2, pdf: 317 + 201 = 518 points
- Strategy 3, EV: 305 + 201 = 506 points
Comparison
Below are the total points and the ranking overall. Voetbalpoules.nl has 221.521 players in total.
Two numbers are shown in Rank and percentile to show the range of players with the same amount of points.
Did we win?
It depends on the quality of your opponents, but you should beat around 87% of players.
This means you have roughly a 50% chance of winning a pool of 6 players (yourself included).
Our percentile score from an earlier blog was 97%. With this performance, you could go up against 22 other players and still have a 50% chance of ending up #1!
What happened?
The pool awards a large number of points for correctly predicting the finalists, the champion, and the top scorer of the tournament.
We did not gain any points here, Brazil and Belgium did not manage to live up to their FIFA ranking of #1 and #2, leaving a lot of points for the players who had France or Argentina a little higher on their list.
We did award ourselves 3 points for the top scorer as a one-in-ten gamble, but that is still only 3 points out of a possible 125 points. Not enough to stick with the earlier 97% percentile score.
Thank you.
If you have read all of my blogs in this series, just one blog, or even only a part of one, I thank you for your time and attention.
I love data science and am glad to be able to share it with so many people over a shared interest.
All predictions
Below are the predictions for each of the three strategies for all World Cup 2022 games.
