Beat the bookies. World Championship betting using ELO-ratings. It's the numbers that count.
Chess players have had it for way longer, soccer countries have it as well: an ELO-rating. An ELO-rating is a number that represents the soccer-strength of a country. These statistics are being tracked for years now. Have a look at Eloratings.
The fun part is: from chess we know that these ELO ratings predict surprisingly well. So I decided to use them to predict the World Championship results.
The principle is simple: for any given two countries with an ELO-rating you can calculate the probability that either country will win. From that, you can simulate what would happen if the championship would be played a (large) number of times. This gives you good estimates of the probability, for instance, that South Korea will reach the final four (5.3%) or the probability that Japan will eventually loose in the quarter finals (13.0%).
I made a pdf (total of 9 pages with 5 pages of tables) with all the predictions in there, and a description on how to use these predictions to your advantage. It costs you 1.99 Euro, that strikes me as a fair compensation for my work, you can't even order a beer for that! Half of what I get will go to charity.
