Friends in fútbol,
World Cup 2022 kicks off in FOUR days. In this email, Commish discusses STRATEGY for our Survivor and Pick'em competitions.
Your first two sets of picks lock Sunday (11/20) at 8am PT - Group Stage picks for our Pick'em, and Matchday 1 picks for our Survivor.
HOW you should pick... well... Commish isn't Diego Forlán but he DOES have the same hair and DID once score a first half hat trick in an adult rec league game. So, follow my wisdom and ramblings below at your own risk.
And please bring a friend or two!
NOW ACCEPTING PHOTOS OF CELEBRATIONS AT UNDERGROUND BARS IN QATAR THAT SERVE BUD LIGHT LIME. ONWARD.
Haven't joined yet? Get in already!!!
SURVIVOR STRATEGY
First, a refresher on how our World Cup Survivor works:
- You can only use each team once during the entire World Cup.
- Only losses eliminate you.
- Group Stage: Pick 3 teams to win OR draw in each matchday.
- Knockout Stage: Pick 2 teams in the Round of 16 to win, then it's 1 team per round from there.
- Last person standing without a loss is the champ.
- Total possible picks: 9 Group + 5 Knockout = 14 picks.
14 picks is nearly half of the 32-team field. Will it take 14 picks? Almost certainly not.
We structure our survivor competitions to produce a single champion. Other sites/pools are OK with huge ties at the end. We are not.
While it's unlikely we'll have multiple survivors making their 14th pick in the Final, it IS possible. So, the critical question you must ask - and continually evaluate as things shake out - is whether you are planning to have a team available to pick in the final, or betting on the competition being over before then.
If you get knocked out of the competition with a bunch of the world's best teams left unpicked... it didn't serve you very well to "save" them. But if this thing defies the odds and goes to the Semis or even the Final, the people who successfully saved the eventual champs and runners-up will be the ones who prosper.
In Commish's mind, the key strategic aspect you CAN control (at least decently well!) is how many of the world's elite teams you are attempting to save for the Knockout Stage.
You need to survive 9 Group Stage picks to even make the Knockout Stage. How much are you gonna risk things - potentially setting yourself up for TONS of good options in the Round of 16, but also increasingly the likelihood you lose before then - vs. playing it safe and seeing what the Round of 16 slate brings you.
There isn't a right or wrong answer. But you should noodle on what level of risk feels good to you and stick to it.
PICK'EM STRATEGY
Again, a refresher on how our World Cup Pick'em works:
- Group Stage: Pick the two teams to advance from each of the eight groups.
- Knockout Stage: Pick the winners of each match before each round.
- Total picks: 16 Group + 15 Knockout = 31 picks.
- Most wins is the overall champ. For people tied with the same number of wins, we have a point system that awards more points in each round as the tourney progresses. So, in practice, if two people finish 28-3 but only one of them got the Final right, the person who got the Final right places higher.
- There are prizes for best Group Stage picking, best Knockout Stage picking, and best Overall picking.
The first rule of ANY pick'em competition in ANY sport is that "upsets happen".
If you pick every single team that's favored to advance from its group (and then favored to win its Knockout match), not only will you NOT win the competition, but you'll also be in a logjam with a bunch of other people who follow this same strategy.
Commish writes about this in EVERY pick'em we do on The SZN and yet... people still pick all favorites sometimes. Don't do this.
Now, in terms of HOW MANY upsets to predict... there's no magic rule. Some World Cups get wacky from the start (see: only 6 European teams making the Knockout Round in 2010), while others go off script near the end (see: 2014 semi-final, Germany 7-1 over Brazil IN Brazil).
What people often fail to acknowledge about upset picking is it's not just about getting it right - it's that correctly picked upsets are HUGELY leveraged given most people went 0-1 on that pick while you went 1-0. Take the inverse case: Correctly picking Brazil to advance out of their Group is a win, but if 99% also picked Brazil, you didn't really gain any ground.
You can pick your spots early or pick them late, so long as you pick your spots. And remember, it's HIGHLY unlikely anyone will go 31-0. So, a few losses will not doom you.
BRACKET - FRESH LIFE IN DECEMBER
No matter how well or poorly you do in Pick'em and Survivor, know you've got the Knockout Stage bracket waiting for you in early December.
Commish will write about this more once the Round of 16 is set, but in short, this is JUST like a March Madness bracket - only 16 teams instead of 64.
WHAT INFO SOURCES TO USE?
Commish is forever a fanboy of FiveThirtyEight's win probability models. They do them for nearly every sport!
Here are some things that stand out from their World Cup Predictions page:
- Brazil is tied for the best offensive rating and also has the best defensive rating... yet they still have just a 22% chance of winning it all
- The World Cup is much closer to baseball's playoffs - MANY teams with a legit shot at winning it - than it is to basketball's playoffs (only a few legit contenders)
- Group F appears to be the most tighly matched, as all teams sit between No. 9 rated (Belgium) and No. 20 (Canada)
- Group E, on the other hand, has No. 2 and 3 overall (Spain and Germany) while also having No. 21 (Japan) and 31 (Costa Rica)
- USA's group (B) is also in the discussion for most tightly matched, as it features a lower top dog (No. 7 England) and a jumble of mid tier squads (No. 16 USA, No. 25 Wales, and No. 27 Iran)
And if you want some insight into why Commish sees FiveThirtyEight as the statistical gold standard - and to learn some cool things about soccer - check their post on how they make their World Cup model.
Make those picks. Practice those show dives. Get pumped.
Yours in Golden Boots,
The Commish