Chart Beat Day One: World Cup Winning Nations and Population

NEW THING: Regular chart-based updates. Not that we’re trying to steal Ampp3d’s idea or anything. Heck, no.

Anyway.

You know when you’ve got an idea for a brilliant pub quiz question, only you’ve no idea what the answer actually is? Well, what with the World Cup being on at the moment, we got to thinking: what IS the smallest nation ever to win the World Cup (after Uruguay)?

Not a bad one, assuming your local pub quiz isn’t one of those where any reference to football will have half the teams rolling their eyes in irritation. It’s one that sets the mind racing to think just which teams have won the World Cup, and what would their respective populations have been at the time of winning the Coupe De Monde? Yes, populations at the time of winning each final. You’ve got to do these things properly.

Well, because we’re blessed with the kind of brain that will make us forget where our keys are because all runtime has become irreversibly devoted to some stat-related miscellany, we’ve worked it out. No need to thank us NOT THAT YOU EVER DO.

Historical census data has been taken from the splendid Geohive (with the caveat in place that Uruguay didn’t collect census data until 1963, so we’ve have to use the 1963 figure for 1930 and 1950), and – as Geohive only list historical census information for the UK as a whole, A Vision Of Britain for the English historical census data.

Anyway. Numbers!

 

 

So: it’s Argentina 1978, with the piffling population figure of 23,978,532. And knowing is half the battle!

What does this mean for the last eight of this year’s tournament? Could any of those take the, erm, much sought-after crown if you discount Uruguay? Another chart.

 

 

So, there it is. Three-fifths of the quarter finalists could become the brand new second-smallest-nation-to-win-a-World-Cup. And who is most likely to win the 2014 World Cup? Well, the average population of a World Cup winning nation is 58,557,534. The nation still in the competition with the closest population to that is FRANCE.

And there you go. France will definitely win the World Cup. That’s the lesson from today’s Chart Beat.

TOMORROW: HOW SEXIST IS MOCK THE WEEK?

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World Cup 2014 Stat-o-thon 2: Top Scorers (Slight Return)

 

Okay, last time in BrokenTV Looks At How To Game The Bookmakers Out Of All Their Hardearned Money, we looked at World Cup Golden Boot odds offset against international goalscoring records.  That gave us the following top five bets:

 

1) Neymar (Brazil) – 10/1, 0.64 goals per game

2) Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast) – 80/1, 0.64 goals per game

3) David Villa (Spain) – 40/1, 0.60 goals per game

4) Gonzalo Higuain (Argentina) – 20/1, 0.58 goals per game

5) Klaas Jan Huntelaar (Holland) – 66/1, 0.57 goals per game

6) Edin Dzeko (Bosnia) – 80/1, 0.57 goals per game

 

All promising enough – putting a month’s salary on Drogba would mean you can definitely just take the rest of the year off. Clearly. Except! For that goals-per-game ratio to mean anything, each player’s respective team kind of needs to be around play as many world cup matches as possible. And trading on Betfair at around 149/1 to win the tournament, Ivory Coast aren’t especially likely to be knocking around at the latter stages in Brazil.

 

So, we need to add in another measure of likely success – number of games to be played. The later the matches are in the tournament, the less likely each player is to score a goal (after all, a cagey semi-final against Spain isn’t likely to generate as many goals as a group match against Honduras, at least in theory. So, we’ve added in some multipliers to come up with a ‘final score’ for each contender, based on the current team betting. So, the four tournament favourites are most likely to take part in the maximum number of matches (three group stage, round of 16, quarter-final, semi-final and final/3rd place play-off) – they get an accumulator score of 10. The next four teams are statistically likely to go out at the quarter final stage, meaning they get two fewer matches than the ‘big four’ – meaning we’re giving them an accumulator score of just eight.

 

This carries on through the rounds, leading to the following accumulator scores (based on Betfair odds):

BRAZIL – 10pts

ARGENTINA – 10pts

GERMANY – 10pts

SPAIN – 10pts

BELGIUM – 8pts

FRANCE – 8pts

ENGLAND – 8pts

ITALY – 8pts

PORTUGAL – 6pts

URUGUAY - 6pts

HOLLAND - 6pts

COLUMBIA - 6pts

CHILE - 6pts

IVORY COAST - 6pts

RUSSIA - 6pts

BOSNIA - 6pts

CROATIA – 4pts

GHANA – 4pts

CAMEROON – 4pts

 

This makes things feel a bit weightier. Note that we’ve only included nations who have a named player priced at 100/1 or lower for top goalscorer. After all, no-one is expecting an Australian striker to get anywhere near that list. This brings us the following top-table of likely bets.

 

 

So, erm, it’s still Neymar who is the most likely bet. Away from that though, and avoiding the temptation to go for a surely-won’t-make-the-starting-XI-this-time Klose, the likes of Fred, Higuain and, er, Andre Schurrle could be a more tempting offer.

 

Maybe.

 

[Trots off to Honest Harry’s Betting Parlour and puts a £1.50 each-way bet on Messi.]

 

HEY! Our World Cup 2014 Prediction League is now free, FREE we tells ya. Go join in the fun NOW.

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The BrokenTV 2014 World Cup Prediction League: Now at the low, low price of free

 

That’s right, due to… let’s say ‘disappointing’ levels of uptake for our World Cup Prediction League at £2-to-charity a go, we’re going to make it free to enter. Though, of course, it would be utterly lovely if you choose to donate a couple of quid anyway.

 

Anyway, if you’d like to enter simply take a ‘form’ and fill in your predictions for match results along with our special bonus categories of ‘competition winner’, ‘top goalscorer’ and ‘First letter of the first word Adrian Chiles says at the start of the opening match coverage’ and send it off to us at brokentvworldcup@gmail.com. We’ll feed your predictions into our specially adapted punchcard mainframe, and update the league table regularly at our specially-fashioned Tumblr page http://brokentvpredictionleague.tumblr.com.

 

Your list of fixtures can be nabbed from here: http://pastebin.com/zDhpyC66 or alternatively here: http://textuploader.com/0hk3

 

Copy-paste them into an email or text file, fill in the results of your choosing, and fire them at brokentvworldcup@gmail.com. Easy as pretending to fall off a log because there was definitely contact there and you can’t expect to get away with that at this level, Clive.

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World Cup 2014 Stat-o-thon: Top Scorers

Hey, let’s try updating the blog for two days in a row!

When it comes to Big Football Tournament betting, the top scorer market is where the proper princely sums are sitting. Anyone who’d backed Milan Baros (shoddy form for Liverpool, the more prolific half of a goal-happy strike duo alongside Jan Koller for the Czech Republic) in Euro 2004 probably still remembers the warm glow of collecting that 45/1 windfall.

When it comes to the 2014 World Cup In Association With Several Soulless Megacorporations, the short odds belong to the usual suspects: Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo et al.

But, what about the value bets? The ones you could easily back on a sports exchange like Betfair, and then happily lay off following a productive group stage for a quick profit? Clinical form at club level is no real indicator of international quality – Lionel Messi’s strike rate for Argentina is barely in the same postcode as his goals-per-game figures at Barcelona.

What someone needs to do is take a list of all potential tournament goalscorers – say, ones priced at 100/1 or less – and knock up a table of goals-per-game ratios for the lot. That way, the value bets are a bit clearer. Surely. Oh, if only some clever, patient and probably quite sexy amateur statisticians had done just that?

Well, they haven’t. But we have:

 

 

So, easy. Plonk a pony on Drogba, sit back and await your definite haul of eighty times whatever a pony is. We never paid attention during repeats of Minder. As we said, easy.

 

“OKAY! I NOW KNOW WHO WILL DEFINITELY BE TOP SCORER AT THE WORLD CUP. I’VE PUT MY NEXT MORTGAGE PAYMENT ON ASAMOAH GYAN, HOW CAN I WHILE THE TIME UNTIL I COLLECT MY WINNINGS?”

Erk. The BrokenTV Brazil 2014 World Cup Prediction League is a handy thing to while away that wait for the baliffs. Predict the outcomes of each match, along with a few important other categories (Who will win the tournament? Who will be top goalscorer? What will be the first letter of the first word Adrian Chiles says at the very beginning of the opening match coverage?). All against other people from around the country. Or the three people on Twitter who kind of take pity on the amount of time it took to put this all together.
The entry fee is just £2, with all collected moneys going to the Flintshire Deaf Childrens Society. At the end of the tournament, the winner will receive a super-secret football-related goody bag (the contents of which are yet to be disclosed, but the value of which will far exceed that £2 stipend). Simply pledge your £2 and either include your email address on the JustGiving comment page (or if you prefer, email me at brokentvworldcup@gmail.com), and I’ll send out a prediction form to be filled in. Once returned, points will start being totted up right from the first match, and information updated at http://brokentvpredictionleague.tumblr.com/ daily.
The rules: simple. Predict the score of each match. Five points for a correct score, two points for a correct outcome. Predict all of the group matches from the start, and lists of the knockout matches to be sent when the line-up is decided.
So: let’s go: http://www.justgiving.com/brokentv

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It’s the BrokenTV World Cup Prediction League! (For charity!)

(Hello! Remember us? We’re back!)



May football prediction accuracy be your goooooooooooooooooooooal!

The quadrennial festival of footballing fortitude known as the World Cup brings together all kinds of people. People doing a World Cup winner sweepstake at work. People putting a few quid at the bookmakers on top goalscorer. And people putting an incredibly ill-judged accumulator on England to win and Dirk Kuyt as top goalscorer. So, all kinds of people.

Best of all are football prediction leagues. These allow individuals to meticulously plan out the likely outcome of each match, and then to subsequently lord it over their friends and colleagues once they sit atop the prediction league table. Or in reality, grumble about how they were cheated and that fifth Costa Rican goal was definitely offside.

The BrokenTV Brazil 2014 World Cup Prediction League is one such league. Predict the outcomes of each match, along with a few important other categories (Who will win the tournament? Who will be top goalscorer? What will be the first letter of the first word Adrian Chiles says at the very beginning of the opening match coverage?). All against other people from around the country. Or the three people on Twitter who kind of take pity on the amount of time it took to put this all together.

The entry fee is just £2, with all collected moneys going to the Flintshire Deaf Childrens Society. At the end of the tournament, the winner will receive a super-secret football-related goody bag (the contents of which are yet to be disclosed, but the value of which will far exceed that £2 stipend). Simply pledge your £2 and either include your email address on the JustGiving comment page (or if you prefer, email me at brokentvworldcup@gmail.com), and I’ll send out a prediction form to be filled in. Once returned, points will start being totted up right from the first match, and information updated at http://brokentvpredictionleague.tumblr.com/ daily.

The rules: simple. Predict the score of each match. Five points for a correct score, two points for a correct outcome. Predict all of the group matches from the start, and lists of the knockout matches to be sent when the line-up is decided.

So: let’s go: http://www.justgiving.com/brokentv

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