2010 FIFA World Cup Predictions Challenge: FIFA 10 Out-Forecasts Bookies

The Half Volley World Cup Predictions Challenge is pitting four different forecasters against each other in a bid to see who is the best at predicting the 2010 World Cup results.

An expert, bookies, the public, and a computer game are all casting their eye over the group stage, with the results logged on Half Volley.

For more on the challenge, and the leaderboard, go to our main World Cup Predictions Challenge page .

By Jon Naylor [e-mail]

Well, well, well. Some might not have seen this one coming.

With the group stage done and dusted (and the Round of 16 well underway), the results of the first Half Volley World Cup Predictions Challenge are in.

And it’s a doozy.

Few could have predicted at the start of the experiment that FIFA would have emerged as the greatest method for forecasting the group stage of the World Cup, but it has been proven so.

Spain’s 2-1 victory over Chile was correctly predicted by both FIFA 10 and our expert Sarah Shepard. This knocked the bookies off the top of the table, replacing them with the computer game.

Our expert ended up finishing third, with the public bringing up the rear having only three correct scores predicted out of the 48 group games.

In fact, out of the 192 total predictions made over the course of the group stage, only 45 were the correct score (24%), 56 were the right result (29%) and 91 were incorrect (47%).

It proves just how unpredictable this World Cup has been so far, and how challenging it has been for our competitors to get the scores and results right.

Here’s the final set of results and the table:

If you had bet on every match based on the results produced by FIFA 10, you would have made a handy profit—which is more than can be said for the England fans who made the trip to South Africa.

So, with the group stage finished and FIFA on top, all that remains to say is if you want to make a football bet, play the match out on FIFA 10 first.