As a refresher, I do update team ratings each day to best fit the odds in their remaining games. Brazil and Mexico each only one have game remaining, so there could be some added uncertainty in the ratings for those teams specifically. That said, each day I start with the current rating and just adjust as needed, so they can't be too far afield.
Germany jumped up a lot. Spain, Portugal, and Ghana all made modest gains as well (despite not playing today). I wonder if that's the market swinging back toward equilibrium after reacting to those team's first game losses; might make for an interesting sports betting strategy.
Looking at the "Round of 16" numbers for Spain/Chile makes me wonder if it's even possible to overstate the importance of tomorrow's game for those two teams. If I have time in the morning I'll try to make one of those 3x3 grids like I made for USA and Ghana, see if I can quantify how big the game really is.
Speaking of big games I can't help but look ahead to Portugal vs. United States on Sunday!
Now Brazil has only a 51% chance of winning its Round of 16 game? How's that possible?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, I do agree there's a little fishiness about Brazil's rating right this minute. It's calibrated based on what rating makes the most sense given the bookie line on their match-up with Croatia, as well as Croatia's remaining match-ups. All the team ratings are calibrated to best fit all the remaining group stage games, which, when there were 48 of those games and 3 for each team, was lovely. Now that there are getting to be fewer group stage games there's going to be a little more fuzziness around the team ratings until I start incorporating knockout odds and/or prior group stage results. I do wonder if there was a bit of a market overreaction to their loss to Mexico that may be corrected today. If that did happen I'll expect a boost in their team rating when I rerun this evening.
ReplyDeleteNot that incorporating group play results thus far would do much to help Brazil's case ;).