Euro 2012 Tournament Odds

The European Championship pits the best 16* international soccer teams on the continent against each other, producing better matchups than the World Cup and fun Eurozone debt crisis proxy fights. The 16 teams are divided into four groups of four. Each group plays a round robin, with the top two in each group advancing to a single-elimination tournament.

* - Okay, 14 best teams and 2 host teams. But even the host nations are pretty good: There's no North Korea losing games 7-0.

The group stage just finished, and the tournament is about to get underway. Of the eight teams remaining, who has the best chance of winning it all?

For baseball and basketball games, you can calculate the expected win probability for a single game from the two teams' Pythagorean records using the log5 method. For international soccer, you can use the Elo ratings to determine the expected win probabilities. The formula looks like this:
We = 1 / (10(-dr/400) + 1),
where dr is the difference in Elo rankings between the two teams.

Once you know the probability that a team wins its first game, you can compute the probability that team wins its second game using conditional probabilities. Like this:
P(wins first game)*(P(beats potential opponent A)*P(potential opponent A wins first game)+P(beats potential opponent B)*P(potential opponent B wins first game))

Keep doing that and you eventually get win probabilities for the entire tournament:

	Elo	Semis	Finals	Champs	Odds (x-to-1)
Spain	2110	83%	67%	44%	2.3
Germany	2063	85%	59%	32%	3.1
England	1950	61%	25%	10%	10.1
Portugal	1883	65%	18%	6.1%	16.4
Italy	1871	39%	12%	3.7%	27
France	1839	17%	9%	2.5%	40
Czech Rep.	1779	35%	6%	1.5%	68.3
Greece	1763	15%	4%	0.9%	112

And you're never going to believe this, but the teams with the best ratings are the ones with the highest chances to win. You can see that the probabilities depend a bit on matchups: France has only a 17% chance of knocking off Spain in the first round, but a 2.5% chance of winning the championship, whereas the Czech Republic has a 35% chance of beating Portugal but a 1.5% chance of making the finals, since they'd have a lower win probability against the remaining teams if they did advance.

Comparing the odds to the betting markets, it looks like Spain might actually be a good wager: if you believe this method, their odds to win are 2.3-to-1, but the books have them listed at 2.6-to-1. Practically everyone else is overvalued, but laughably so for Portugal (listed at 7.5-to-1), Italy (9-to-1), and France (12).

UPDATE #1: June 21, 4:45 p.m.
Here's what the odds look like after Portugal's win over the Czech Republic:

	Elo	Semis	Finals	Champs	Odds (x-to-1)
Spain	2110	83%	64%	41%	2.4
Germany	2063	85%	59%	32%	3.1
Portugal	1901	100%	29%	11%	9.3
England	1950	61%	25%	10%	10.3
Italy	1871	39%	12%	3.6%	27.3
France	1839	17%	7%	2.1%	47.6
Greece	1763	15%	4%	0.9%	117

Note that everyone else's odds change, despite not playing, because of the improvement in Portugal's ranking. Portugal now has an 11% chance of winning the tournament, leapfrogging England, who obviously still has to survive the semifinal matchup. France, a bad bet to begin with, becomes a slightly worse bet now that they have to beat both Iberian Peninsula teams to get to the finals.

UPDATE #2: June 22, 4:45 p.m.
Here's what the odds look like after Germany's demolishing of the Greeks:

	Elo	Semis	Finals	Champs	Odds (x-to-1)
Germany	2074	100%	70%	39%	2.6
Spain	2110	83%	64%	39%	2.6
Portugal	1901	100%	29%	9.6%	10.5
England	1956	62%	21%	8.4%	11.9
Italy	1871	38%	9%	2.7%	36.9
France	1839	17%	7%	1.8%	54.8

Germany are* technically the favorites by half a percentage point over Spain. But, again, Spain still has a first round match to play; with their odds somewhere in the 11-to-4 range (2.75-to-1), they still look like the best bet.

* - This always looks wrong to me, but everyone else does it. My least favorite thing about soccer.

UPDATE #3: June 25, 9:15 a.m.
Here's what the odds look like after this weekend's games, including the first upset of the knockout stages as the favored England side screwed up some penalty kicks to lose to Italy in a shootout:

	Elo	Semis	Finals	Champs	Odds (x-to-1)
Spain	2123	100%	78%	49%	2.0
Germany	2074	100%	73%	36%	2.8
Italy	1902	100%	27%	7.6%	13.2
Portugal	1901	100%	22%	7.2%	13.8

This is the last update here, but I'll still post updates on Twitter. Italy's odds are slightly better than Portugal's, just because Germany has a lower rating than Spain's. I do like the fact that every German game from here out (vs. Italy, then vs. Spain/Portugal winner) is another Bailout Bowl, though some of that has to do with the woeful state of the Eurozone.

The Pain from a Future Wound: Betting on Mad Men Season 6

In sports, futures bets are a popular way for casual fans to get in on some sweet season-long action and casinos to take advantage of the eternal optimism of Cubs fans. What's more, future odds for next season are up mere minutes after the previous season ends. And while you can't place many entertainment-related bets in Vegas, you can certainly place them online. With all that in mind, The Feats of Strength proudly presents the first lines posted* for the sixth season of Mad Men.

* - God, I HOPE they're the first lines posted. What is wrong with you people?

The Dutch Oven Overheats

Yea, and when the Philistines hath batted around in the inning, Maddux brother of Greg pulleth Holland and summoned yon reliever.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Rangers starter Derek Holland. Just after Memorial Day, Holland made the anemic Seattle Mariners look like the '27 Yankees, giving up eight runs in less than two innings May 30. Just to prove it was no fluke, Holland labored through a five-inning start against the Oakland A's in the pitcher's haven that is the Oakland Coliseum.

The Rangers put Holland on the disabled list with a "fatigued shoulder" and blamed a stomach virus that saw "The Dutch Oven" drop some 15 pounds. But Grantland's Jonah Keri has the real story:

Tangled in the Rigging: Defending the NBA Draft Lottery

The NBA conference finals brings with it one of the best sideshows in sports: the NBA draft lottery, in which 14 grown men stand around awkwardly for half an hour to figure out how a bunch of ping pong balls bounced. We*, the viewing audience, are treated to a half-hour special containing some 15 minutes of talking heads speculating wildly, 2 minutes of commisioner David Stern reading franchise names, and 5 minutes of awkward interviews with team representatives. Fascinating.

* - Maybe "we" is the wrong pronoun; I mean, I didn't watch it.

But while the presentation of the lottery may not be especially compelling, the lottery itself sure is. The lottery teams (i.e., those that miss the playoffs) are ranked in inverse order of record, with the worst teams receiving the best chances of a high pick. So the team with the worst record has a 25% chance of winning the lottery, the second-worst team has a 19.9% chance of winning the lottery, and so on down to the 14th-worst team (the last team out of the playoffs) who has a 0.5% chance of winning the lottery. The whole list of probabilities for this year's draft is available here.

Some have argued (with varying degrees of seriousness) that the lottery system is rigged*, and point to the fact that the worst team in the league hasn't won a lottery since the Orlando Magic won and picked Dwight Howard in 2004. But I want to stress this again, because it's important: the team with the highest probability will still lose the lottery (i.e., not get the first overall pick) 75% of the time.

...I mean, uh, ALBERT PUJOLS IS AWESOME AT BASEBALL

"That one's for you, Bryan." (via)
I typed up my most recent article, investigating the causes behind Albert Pujols' home run drought, with a growing sense of dread. Visions of Pujols homering in his first at bat Thursday night hung over my frantic analysis like some baseball bat of Damocles. I watched Thursday and Friday's games with bated breath.

Considering the power Pujols has displayed throughout his career, the fact that he made it until Sunday afternoon was as good as I could have hoped for. Plus, now I get to write an easy follow-up post whining about my miserable luck*.

After the home run, Keith Law tweeted that he couldn't wait for the whiplash-incuding speed with which the narrative on Pujols would change. As a free service to those busy producers of the talking head panel shows on ESPN, we here at The Feats of Strength wish to provide a general recipe for a ready-made Albert Pujols discussion.

We're So Sorry, Uncle Albert

Albert Pujols would be very happy if we all just forgot about the last month of baseball.

Pujols signed a 10-year, $240M contract over the winter with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim*. The statistically-minded balked at the deal, which would pay him $30m in 2021, when Pujols will be 41 years old. Still, it wasn't hard to imagine that the deal could still be worthwhile, so long as Pujols crushed in the first half of the deal.

...Whoops. Pujols, projected by FanGraphs to hit 28 home runs this season, is still waiting for his first homer some 107 plate appearances into the season. That's the longest drought of the season, and naturally, everyone's asking, "What's wrong with The Machine?"

Bracket Showdown, Day 10: [Title Vacated]

With Kentucky's dismantling of Kansas in last night's national championship game, the first ever Feats of Strength Bracket Showdown has come to an end*. A comical 28 entries correctly put Kentucky on the final line. As I said on Twitter last night, I have never seen more experts pick the same team to win a championship -- and be correct -- in a long time. Then again, maybe I just haven't been paying attention.

Anyway, the Aluminum Pole for best performance** goes to Jerry Palm at CBS Sports, who picked 3 of the Final Four, both finalists, and Kentucky to win for a total of 146 points.

Congrats, Jerry; you've earned this.