Round-Robin Tournament Challenge
In round-robin tournaments - like the FIFA World Cup Finals (2022) - one is faced (upon completion of the 'Round Of 16' matchups) with the eight remaining contenders to the throne. Whatever their prior rankings, these teams have progressed to the quarter-finals of the biggest tournament in the world based on what they have done in the previous two weeks of fixtures.
'In tournaments, one may be interested in locating the really talented man in the sense that he has won over the largest number of opponents but simultaneously he has been defeated by only a few opponents...' - Ramanujacharyulu (1964).
Power-Weakness Ratio (PWR)
If we focus solely on current form (all teams starting with a blank slate), then we may benefit from using an alternate protocol (Power, Weakness and Glory at FIFA World Cup 2018) for finding a likely outsider to spring an upset.
Convex Bets
We use an adapted version of the Ramanujacharyulu algorithm to find one or more Convex Bets in the quarter-final contests. As the match odds are too short for our liking, we can take advantage of the 'To Reach The Final' market to provide us with higher prices, albeit with additional risk.
Quarter-Finals
At this stage of the tournament, we finally have a basis for indirect comparisons as the 'Round of 16' matches provide the baseline for the PWR rankings. Up to this point, the splendid isolation of the individual group matches meant that we could only compare separate clusters of four teams.
We can evaluate some possible trades using the newly-minted PWR rankings and our blank slate premise.
Dec 09
The Netherlands is an easy selection from the first contest - both better ranking and higher price. Given that we rate Croatia only one place behind Brazil in our rankings plus the huge disparity in price makes Croatia the obvious choice.
- Netherlands (6) [6.8] vs Argentina (11) [3.85]
- Croatia (4) [18.00] vs Brazil (3) [1.82]
Dec 10
England should prevail over the reigning world champions on current form and Morocco is our top selection at a fantastic price.
- England (2) [3.50] vs France (7) [2.86]
- Morocco (1) [17.00] vs Portugal (9) [3.25]
Though I readily admit that football knowledge is not one of my strengths and that the 'blank slate' assumption is unrealistic at best, I am still sufficiently enchanted by the work of Ramanujacharyulu (1964) - as it applies to round-robin tournaments - to throw caution to the wind and try to identify some Convex Bets in the quarter-finals of the biggest tournament in the world. What is the worst that can happen - I lose all four trades (All in a day's work for your average sports trader!).