Tournament Betting Recap
Every bet is settled and paid. Here is where the money went.
The Road To The Title
R64 · Gohire · 2-1
R32 · Japan · 3-0
R16 · Paraguay · 2-1
QF · Kuazulu · 2-1
SF · France · 3-1
F · Nubia · 3-1
Sind
Brazil 8-2 DanaHandle
A Word On The Vig
Every normal sportsbook keeps a cut. It is called the vig. It sits quietly inside every price on the board, and it is the reason the house wins in the long run. Ours was priced to average minus 23%.
That is not a misprint. Every line was set to pay out more than it was worth. Across 1,646 bets, the book took 623,700 credits and gave back 776,837, a hold of minus 24.6%. That is 153,137 credits pushed across the counter to the people on the other side of it.
Asked to lose 23 per hundred, our bookie managed 24.6. An overachiever. Management has been informed, and management has elected not to intervene.
Chalk Cashed, Longshots Didn't
Return per 100 wagered, grouped by price. Anything right of the line made money.
Chalk carried the tournament. Bets under 2.00 returned 147 per 100. Bets at 4.00 and longer returned 79.
Round By Round
Measured per match and per person, not by raw totals. Raw totals fall every round simply because there are fewer matches left to bet. Return is per 100 wagered.
Much the same crowd turned out for every match, between 20 and 28 bettors, from the Round of 64 through to the Final. What changed was conviction: the average bettor put 171 on a Round of 64 match and 1,618 on the Final, nearly ten times more. The semi-finals were the only losing round.
Ran Hot, Ran Cold
Every price came from simulating the tournament thousands of times, so it was an honest read of that side's real chances. A short price that loses is variance, not a bad price. "Expected" is how often bets at those prices should have cashed. These are the sides whose results landed furthest from what the odds expected, with 25 or more bets each.
| Nation | Bets | Average price | Expected | Actually cashed | Per 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albania | 27 | 4.24 | 30% | 67% | 204 |
| Kuazulu | 25 | 3.83 | 35% | 72% | 164 |
| Nubia | 76 | 2.55 | 49% | 84% | 156 |
| Flanders | 119 | 2.12 | 60% | 100% | 213 |
| California | 47 | 4.27 | 33% | 60% | 147 |
| Nicaragua | 44 | 2.45 | 51% | 45% | 74 |
| Caenia | 28 | 2.13 | 58% | 39% | 41 |
| Portugal | 45 | 1.77 | 70% | 51% | 56 |
| Croatia | 33 | 1.68 | 73% | 52% | 54 |
| Champa | 27 | 3.35 | 42% | 26% | 41 |
Croatia ran coldest. Their bets carried the shortest prices on the board, expected to cash about 73% of the time. They cashed barely half the time instead. Albania ran the other way entirely, cashing two bets in three at prices that expected fewer than one in three.
Six Kinds Of Bettor
Accounts sorted by how they actually bet. Each falls into the first group it matches, reading down the table. "Ended between" is the worst and best result in the group, against everything that account was ever granted.
| Type | People | Bets | Handle | Per 100 | Lost money | Ended between |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Never playedHeld an account and never placed a bet | 10 | 0 | 0 | n/a | 0 | 1.0× |
| DabblersFewer than ten bets all tournament | 12 | 62 | 11,987 | 105 | 4 | 0.0× to 2.0× |
| Stuck to a priceKept to a narrow band, mostly 2.00 to 2.40 | 11 | 631 | 298,697 | 133 | 0 | 1.4× to 10.5× |
| Longshot huntersAveraged 3.00 or longer | 9 | 432 | 76,581 | 95 | 7 | 0.05× to 2.1× |
| Pushed hardestHalf the bankroll or more on a typical matchday | 3 | 120 | 139,019 | 127 | 0 | 1.0× to 10.1× |
| Everyone elseSteady volume, no strong lean | 9 | 401 | 97,416 | 122 | 2 | 0.5× to 6.0× |
One group stands out and it is not the boldest one. Every single account that kept to a narrow band of prices finished ahead: eleven people, not one loser among them. Even the worst of them still ended on nearly one and a half times what they were given. The longshot hunters are the mirror image, seven losers from nine. Picking a price and sticking to it mattered more than how much anyone staked.
How Hard People Pushed
A whole matchday went on the board at once, so the honest measure of nerve is the share of the bankroll committed across a matchday rather than on any single bet. Accounts with fifteen bets or more.
| Committed per matchday | People | Typical | Per 100 | Ended between |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under a quarter | 4 | 21% | 124 | 0.3× to 2.7× |
| A quarter to a half | 17 | 37% | 135 | 0.5× to 10.5× |
| A half to three quarters | 7 | 60% | 121 | 0.5× to 10.1× |
| Three quarters or more | 2 | 78% | 74 | 0.05× to 0.2× |
Between a quarter and three quarters of the bankroll committed per matchday, returns barely move. Pushing harder did not make anyone better at picking. Only two accounts ever went beyond three quarters, and both were destroyed: they finished on five and sixteen credits in every hundred they were given. Everything short of that was survivable.
The Shape Of A Tournament
All 44 betting accounts through the knockout rounds, counting money still riding on unsettled matches. Lines only move when a match finishes. Every account has its own colour. The top ten finishers are lightest and the tail darkest, with neighbouring finishers set far apart on the colour wheel so the lines stay easy to tell apart.
Hover or tab to any line to pick out that account.
Notable Stories
They went all in twice: first on a Round of 16 tie, turning 3,564 into 6,700, then again days later, losing the lot. At their most committed they had 14,256 riding on matches still to play, and never dropped below 1,500 all tournament. Finished on 22,019.
She built a 3,488 bankroll and gave back 95% of it, closing on 162. At her lowest she was worth 70 credits counting everything still open, the only account that genuinely approached zero.
He peaked at 7,379, put 5,000 on the Final at 3.04, and watched it lose. He closed on 2,074, which is precisely the median finish for the book. The man in charge landed exactly in the middle.
They turned 3,600 into 37,703, cashing 71% of 55 bets. Their picks returned 175 per 100, the best of any large account, and they finished within 1,204 credits of first place on a third of the turnover.
He played all 64 knockout matches and took the longer price in every one. Not a single favourite all tournament. He peaked at 2,454 and closed on 454.
He placed only 17 bets and cashed 15, the best strike rate of anyone with real volume. He never dipped below 500, then rode a 3,000 swing on the Final from a 1,500 start to a 9,746 finish.
70 bets, 61 of the 64 matches, and almost all of them priced between 1.9 and 2.4. The tightest price discipline of anyone who bet in volume, at a steady 41% of the bankroll a matchday. It returned 159 per 100 and turned 1,500 into 9,403.
She wrote the odds, ran the book, carried the largest exposure of the tournament at 16,000 at once, and finished first on 40,363. Her picks returned 128 per 100 against a book average of 125, so it was all volume: she staked 126,782, nearly three times anyone else. An independent inquiry found no wrongdoing. She conducted the inquiry.
65 bets, but only 25 landed where the odds said 31 should have. They collected just 48% of what everyone else got at those same prices, the worst shortfall on the book, and closed on 319 from a 2,000 start.
He wrote the first version of the engine this whole tournament runs on, and it repaid him with 17 winners from 41 bets against an expected 22. Nothing reckless in his prices, an average of 2.77, but he took home 60% of what those bets were worth. The house tips its cap.
Backed the outsider in seven bets out of ten and got 12 winners where the odds implied 15. Three results away from a very different tournament. Closed on 764.
They put out about 57% of the bankroll on a typical matchday, among the boldest on the book, and closed on 2,025 credits having started with 2,000. Not merely flat: only 18 bets landed where the prices implied 24, so breaking even was a decent escape.
On The Pitch
| Notable | Match | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Longest price to cash | Timor at 5.98 | 6 bettors turned 874 into 5,224 |
| Biggest upset payout | California at 4.64 | 10 bettors turned 4,166 into 19,325 |
| Most handle on a match | Flanders 3–1 Nubia | The Final, 42,055 wagered |
| Most bets on a match | Nigeria 4–0 California | Round of 16, 48 bets from 30 bettors |
Final Numbers
26 bettors put 110 futures bets on 27 nations and 13 cashed. Unlike match prices, the futures board repriced after every round, so timing mattered as much as the pick: winning bets were struck anywhere from 2.33 to 27.50, and the earliest backer collected twelve times what the latest did on the same call. Public money favoured Nigeria at 38 tokens. The champion drew 18.