In regards to the World Cup, Yahoo Fantasy Sports has launched ’World Soccer Pick'Em‘, where users can make their picks on who will win each match(or in the group stage, whether the game will draw). The same interface also exists on ESPN.
In the group stage, the majority of Yahoo predicted the correct result 30.5/48 times, or 63.5% of the time. (0.5 for the Nigeria-Bosnia match that was split right in the middle).
Of those 17.5 losses, 2 were attributed to the Spanish implosion that very few could have predicted.
6 were drawn games.
This is relevant as there was not a single game where a draw was the most widely predicted result. It makes sense, as a draw is a “boring” result to predict, plus it’s twice as likely that one side wins than that the game draws anyway.
Thus far in the knockout stage, the majority has been perfect, correctly predicting wins by Brazil, Columbia, Netherlands, and Costa Rica.
If this trend continues, we can expect France, Germany, Argentina, and the USA to be advancing to the quarterfinals.
It’s worth noting that the top ‘picker’ in the world on Yahoo’s site correctly predicted 34/48 games in the group stage, and has hit on all four knockout games.
The 38/52 total makes 73% accuracy the World’s most accurate ‘picker’.
Though impressive(considering this is the World’s best), it looks like we don’t have any prophets this year.
