World Cup Predictions Challenge: FIFA Storm into Second as Shocks Reign

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 results of the 2010 World Cup.

An expert, a 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 .

After a particularly busy weekend at Half Volley towers, the World Cup Predictions Challenge is receiving a three-day bumper update.

It’s been one hell of a World Cup for shocks, with John Motson even going so far as calling it the most unpredictable tournament of his life.

This has only made matters even harder for our predictors, who have been suffering a real drought in successful forecasts.

The main movers over the last three days have been FIFA 10, whose PS3 simulations have featured three perfect score predictions from the last nine matches—they’ve risen from last to second.

Friday’s matches only yielded two correct predictions from a possible 12, as England produced the most dour performance of the competition in their failure to beat Algeria, Serbia shocked form-side Germany and the Americans were denied a perfectly valid win against Slovenia by ropey decision-making.

Saturday was an ever-so-slight improvement, with eight incorrect forecasts. Only the public didn’t see a win for Holland against Japan, but no one saw Denmark taking all three points from Cameroon.

The three games on Sunday featured one of the shocks of the tournament so far in the world champion’s draw with the 78th best side in the world; needless to say, none of our predictors saw a draw between Italy and New Zealand coming.

Fortunately, Brazil lived up to their pre-tournament hype in their 3-1 defeat of Ivory Coast, a result that was forecast by three competitors, with one perfect score from the public.

Here’s the results and leaderboard after days 6,7, and 8 of the tournament: