World Cup Knockout Matches

As I may have mentioned once or twice, one of the most consistently profitable betting strategies is that of backing the Draw in the knockout rounds of major international football tournaments, and with the current FIFA World Cup reaching that stage in a few days, I thought a post on this topic might be timely and of interest.

I have data going back to 2006 and blindly backing the Draw in all 75 elimination matches since then would have generated a profit of 25.59 units, an ROI of 34%. 

Only in 2010 would you have made a loss, (-1.62u) with 2014 the best year with 16.94u. 

Of the four rounds, only the semi-final is currently showing a loss, albeit just 0.66u.

If you'd excluded matches where the favourite was odds-on, the 30 matches would have an ROI of 61% (18.17u). Only five of the 30 games was decided by more than one goal.

Of course a quadrennial tournament such as the World Cup doesn't generate a huge sample size, but as I've mentioned before, it's a trend that persists across the individual confederation tournaments, Euros, Afcons etc. Only CONCACAF's Gold Cup bucks the trend, but even here their new Nations Cup competition falls in line:

An extra "Round of 32" this year will mean more than twice (31) as many elimination matches than in the past. This might not be great news with the likelihood of mismatches. The Round of 16 is currently the stage with the most goals, averaging 2.45 goals per game and of course, goals are not what we want. It's quite likely that the Round of 32 will be even higher with at least one team ranked in the 60s definitely through (South Africa). 

Friend of the blog Peter K wrote to say:

Since the last World Cup where I did rather well on your recommendation for
the strategy following the group stage, I've been looking forward to 
doubling down this year.

But after 50% of group games so far have ended in draws I'm getting somewhat anxious :(

At the time of writing (54 matches completed) the percentage of drawn matches has reverted to a more typical 26% so hopefully Peter's fully back on board. Past performance is no guarantee of future success of course, but this is an edge that shows no sign of fading away. 

Since 1986, when the Round of 16 was first introduced, 53 of 150 elimination matches have ended (after 90 minutes) as Draws, and the lowest number in any single tournament was 4 in 2010, 1998, 1994 and 1986. 

On a personal note, my European adventure following Crystal Palace around Europe came to a wonderful end in Leipzig last month. I saw my team play in Norway, Poland, France, Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland (again) and Germany. On the one trip where my wife was with me, we additionally spent a week in Rome and time in Switzerland and Belgium. The issue I have now is that after telling my wife this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Palace won the tournament and get to do it all again next season. I made some good friends along the way, (reader Andy being extremely helpful), saw some wonderful places that I hadn't previously heard of, saw the always friendly Mark Bright on three consecutive trips, bumped into an equally friendly Steve Parish on the eve of the Final and drank too many beers. Retirement came at a good time.