Comments on: France v Portugal

By: glenn

glenn — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 10:57:50 +0000

But the Italians dive better than Louganis ever did? Is it me, or is this the way all Southern Europeans play their football/soccer/calcio?

By: Tiago

Tiago — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 10:28:08 +0000

Portugal has much more talent than France and France, well… most of them aren’t really french…

By: hermenauta

hermenauta — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 17:19:43 +0000

Despite the Le Pen thing (scary), I cheered to see Portugal win…me and 180 M brazilians, for obvious reasons.

By: K. Williams

K. Williams — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 15:18:17 +0000

Chris, you now have me officially confused. No one has ever argued that the test of betting markets’ accuracy is whether favorites win all the time—of course there are upsets. Surely the test is whether the markets are better than random—or, to be more specific with regard to soccer, whether the probabilistic forecasts implied in the moneyline are accurate. But that can only be measured over time.

More to the point, I don’t understand how the two parts of your statements work together: a season is just made up of 38 individual games. If the market is bad at predicting the outcome of the individual games, it has to be bad at predicting the outcome of the season. But you’re arguing that it can be bad at the former, but good at the latter. This makes no sense to me, unless all you’re saying is that there’s more noise in the forecasts for a single game. This is obviously true, but it doesn’t invalidate the usefulness of relying on the market for a forecast.

The argument for betting markets is not that they’re in any sense infallible. It’s that they offer the best (not the optimal, but the best available) probabilistic estimate of what will happen. I think you’re absolutely right that the low-scoring nature of soccer means that that estimate for any one game is going to be imperfect. But it’s still going to be a pretty good guide to what’s going to happen.

Here, by the way, is a paper on a toy market for the Euro 2000 championships, where the market called 15 out of 21 games correctly: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/558325.html

By: lacordaire

lacordaire — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 13:22:51 +0000

More mixed metaphores, this time a selection from the host TV reporter/columnist:

Wenn man ihn jetzt ins kalte Wasser schmeißt, könnte er sich die Finger verbrennen. (Gerhard Delling)

Ich habe nur immer meine Finger in Wunden gelegt, die sonst unter den Tisch gekehrt worden wären. (Paul Breitner)

Wer hinten so offen ist, kann nicht ganz dicht sein. (Werner Hansch)

Die Viererkette ist nur noch ein Perlchen.(Johannes B. Kerner)

By: soru

soru — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:25:45 +0000

39: that would be true even if the bookies had perfect knowledge of the probabilities involved.

How well they estimate those probabilities is a different question, although probably not one with an answer ‘so badly that by following a simple rule, you can beat the house take and make a consistent profit’.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 08:47:32 +0000

K. Williams: if you backed the market favourites on any given weekend in the FA Premier League, you would lose money. There are just too many upsets. But over the course of a season, it is entirely predictable who will do best. Partly this is a function of soccer being a low scoring sport. With 10 minutes to go a weak team that is 1-0 down will often force a draw from a dead ball situation. So I rest my case: the markets are not very good at predicting individual game but excellent at predicting the league.

Next season, for example, we can be almost certain that Liverpool will finish higher than Aston Villa (Betfair have Liverpool at 11 to win the league and Villa at 920). But, on the strength of that dominance, I predict that the markets will also favour Liverpool over Villa in both the home and away games. I also predict that Liverpool will not win both those games (and they may well not win either of them).

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 07:53:44 +0000

Definitely a game to make you cheer on Italy. Portugal were diving all over the place, but at least they looked liked they wanted to win. The French looked lazy (especially Henry, as always).

By: dale

dale — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 07:19:35 +0000

well, bill (36), then it’s the perfect final for you.

agree with ray (1) – hard to cheer a team with henry in it, and his diving and gamesmanship, unsupported by any great legitimate efforts from him demonstrated why.

italy seems to have woken up. perhaps the thought of playing in Serie C next season has spurred players on. my money’s on italy.

By: bill cowper

bill cowper — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:41:31 +0000

Nice. Blue is my favorite color.

By: novakant

novakant — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:04:19 +0000

that was booooooring, yeah, they should’ve both lost

By: ***

*** — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:31:08 +0000

Cona. cona. cona!

By: dearieminho

dearieminho — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 22:46:35 +0000

I fell asleep.

By: K. Williams

K. Williams — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 21:17:46 +0000

Chris, that’s an interesting paper, but I don’t see how it tells us anything about whether betting markets do or do not do a good job of predicting outcomes in soccer games. The authors’ definition of “underdog,” as far as I can tell, is the team that at the end of the season had fewer wins (with upsets being games in which the underdog beats the favorite). But we want to know if betting markets did a good job of identifying the underdogs or not—in other words, whether the markets did a good job of predicting the likelihood of an upset. The paper doesn’t speak to this point at all, unless I’m misunderstanding their definition of “underdog.” (And I don’t think I am—it’s unlikely they collected data on FA betting markets dating back to 1888.)

By: pp

pp — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 21:13:59 +0000

Don’t you bet soccer on a moneyline?
Betting is never a predictor of who will win, just who statistically needs “help” to score the same.