Slicing The World Cup Draw

Halfway through the Round of 16, and we got the Draws we were hoping for yesterday, From 1986, the Round of 16's 68 matched have now seen 22 Draws, an implied price of 3.09. 

Including all elimination games from that year, the 44 Draws from 124 matches make the implied Draw price 2.82. 

Our old friend Slicer has been touting the Draw on the Betfair Forum, posting the following:

I was walking through London's Hyde Park this morning enjoying the sunshine when I passed a park bench. An unshaven disheveled old man emerged from underneath layers of cardboard. He asked me for some spare change. I hesitated until he told me that his name was Martin Gale, the world renowned developer of the Martin Gale Successive Stakes betting method. He told me that if I gave him £2 for a cup of coffee, he would reveal to me a guaranteed progressive betting system for the rest of the World Cup. Looking at his appearance, I asked him if his methods were so successful why he was living like this. His reply that he had made so much money that it became meaningless and he wanted to go back to basics, living a simple life.

To cut the story short, he said that because there was really no outstanding team in the World Cup, and even the better fancied sides appear mediocre, draws can be expected, and that I had better get some sandwiches and shandies in to keep me going through many extra times and penalties. So I asked what was the bottom line. He said at the top level in most countries approx. 30% of games end in draws. So, he said, with 30 games left one might expect 10 games to result in draws, particularly as there is very little between most of the teams left in the competition.

He said start off with low steaks, back the draw in game 1-France v Argies. If you lose back the draw in game to establish the required prophet AND recover your lost steak on game 1. The system progresses like this to the end of the competition. With odds of approx. between 2/1 and 3/1, one can't lose too much and it will keep the interest.

Now- we have to decide if he was telling the truth about winning loads and going back to basics or whether his famed Martin Gale method has lead him to such losses that he is reduced to living in this manner.

I felt I had to tell the story of this meeting to you, my BetFair friends.

Make up your own mind as ever and good luck.

His friend is a little off with the claim that "at the top level in most countries approx. 30% of games end in draws" - how I wish that were true - but as history shows, Draws are a good bet in World Cup elimination games.

I'm also not sure where his friend got the '30 games left' from. There were 15 competitive games left at the start of the Round of 16, and now just 11.

I would also never encourage anyone to use anything but level stakes.  

Coincidentally, the Slicer post linked to above will take you back to June 2010 when the South Africa World Cup was in full swing, and it's a little sad that eight years later, I am still banging on about the Draw. The 0:0 hasn't come in yet, but there has been at least one such scoreline in every World Cup knock-out phase from 1986. I'll also mention that the implied price on the 0:0 Half-Time score in elimination games is 2.34, and 1.82 for the Half-Time Draw.  

Looking at today's games, can Mexico beat their famous "5th game" curse?

The Mexican national team have been eliminated from every FIFA World Cup at the round of 16 stage from 1994 onward, with the first incident happening in the 1994 FIFA World Cup when the team lost to Bulgaria through a penalty shootout, and since then were eliminated at the same stage from every tournament afterwards (losing to Germany in 1998, the United States in 2002, Argentina in 2006 and 2010, and the Netherlands in 2014).

Being group runner-up doesn't help their cause - Russia became only the second group runner-up to advance in three World Cups yesterday, so it's goodbye to the only two remaining non-UEFA or non-CONMEBOL nations later today.