This weekend in European soccer (12-14 December)

Premier League

What a weekend is ahead of us with some very interesting games in the premier league to come.

Tottenham Hotsupr vs. Manchester United
A very interesting game between the spurs that probably didn´t have two stable matches with the sam squad and manager from the beginning of the season. Recent transfers with Croatian Modric being the highlight of them still didn´t pay off and the pressure is incresing. On the other hand things aren´t that calm for Manchester United with fan calls that starting to compare the Berbatov deal to the one with Juan Veron. Anything can probably happen in this game which will be very interesting to watch.
When reviewing what the online community at hunchers.com are saying on this game we can see that the consensus prediction is that Man United will win this game 2-1. 63% think that they will win, around 26% say that the game will end in a draw and 11% are saying that Tottenham will win.

Middlesbrough vs. Arsenal

Current consensus prediction is that this game will end in a 1-1 draw. Although almost 47% of the users think that the young and improving gunners will take this game having a lot of players returning from injuries.

Liverpool vs. Hull

The community is pretty much convinced that the Reds will continue their solid performance in the permiership with a win 2-1 over Hull. A hard number of 73% think that Liverpool will win this game.

Chelsea vs. West Ham

A solid 95% of the predictions! say that Chelsea will win this game easily. Current consensus prediction is 2-0 to Chelsea.

El Clasico

One of the most interesting matches of this week is played in the spanish league (primera division) between the two legendary clubs of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Barcelona are coming to this game as the favroites and suprisingly the last two years champions from Madrid are the underdog.

But could the wind direction change in this game for Madrid?

Historically that has been the case for this games, they set statements about who is more serious this season. Madrid had just replace the manager position with Huande Ramos taking over after the end of the Schuster area. In addition, it looks like finally Madrid are building a team for a longer run with the latest transfer of Netherlands super talent Klaas-Jan Huntelaar that will start playing for Madrid in January 2009.

Currently the odds at hunchers.com are in favor of Barcelona for a 2-1 win at this game in the Camp Nou.

Can wisdom of crowds predict future game scores?

A look at last weekend predictions
A lot was said about utilizing the wisdom of crowds to various fields. at hunchers.com we take it a little step further. We take all the predictions that the members of the community posted on a certain game, mix up together using our proprietary algorithm that is based on past success of active members (sometimes success within the same league or on previous games of the same team) and produce what we call the consensus prediction. In the last post I gave some of the consensus predictions of the central European soccer games. Here they are with the final results:

Bayern Munchen - Hoffenheim (prediction was 2-1, final result was exactly the same)

Bolton - Chelsea (prediction was 2-1 to Chelsea, final result 2-0 to Chelsea)

Arsenal - Wigan (prediction was 2-0 to Arsenal, final result was 1-0 to Arsenal)

Blackburn - Liverpool (prediction was 1-0 to Liverpool, final result was 3-1 to Liverpool)

Manchester United - Sunderland (prediction was 3-0 to Manchester, final result was 1-0 to ManU)

Fulham - Manchester City (prediction was 1-1, final result was exactly the same)

The bottom line is that in all the games the community predicted correctly the winner/loser/draw and 2 games it predicted the exact result.
Not bad . . .

Who will qualify to the top 16 in the Champions League?
In this article I posted at sportingo.com you can find all the scenarios, which teams are still racing for a ticket to the exclusive 16 club and which teams will play for a ticket to the UEFA cup.

This weekend in European Soccer (6-8 December)

Long time has passed since my last post here and I kind of neglected the work. I hope it won´t happen again and that I can keep up with posting my picks and observations towards the coming game weeks of European soccer and more.





Bayern Munchen vs. Hoffenheim (Bundesliga) - Friday, December 5th


Well this game is actually going to start real soon as I write the post. I think that it is one of the most interesting matches of this weekend. Vedad Ibisevic with 17 goals! so far and the Hoffenefim gang are the surprise of the league leading it after 15 matches. Today Hoffeneim will face one of its important challenges. A win over Bayern who is recovering from a bad season start can declare about the serious intentions of this small team to take it all the way this year. A lost here will reopen the title race and can lead to a bad momentum for Hoffeneim and a positive one for Bayern. Reviewing what the Hunchers.com community is saying on this game I see that the consensus prediction is that Bayern will win 2 - 1 and that 89% say that Bayern will win. With such strong odds I will definitely go with Bayern winning 2-1 as the final game result.





Bolton vs. Chelse (Premier League) - Saturday, December 6th

A crucial game for Chelsea. A lost here and they can put themselves in a situation in which they are chasing Liverpool and Abramovic´s club has proven to be not working very well under pressure. Bolton on the other hand are having a pretty good season and will put up a good fight to be one of the top 5 in order to be in a reasonable place for one of the European championships next year. Reviewing what Hunchers.com community members are saying on this game we can see that the majority (61%) think that Chelsea will take this game away. The consensus prediction formula also thinks that Chelsea will take the game 2-1.

Other interesting games and predictions

Arsenal - Wigan (2-0 to Arsenal)

Blakburn - Liverpool (0-1 to Liverpool)

Man United - Sunderland (3 - 0 to Man U)

Fulham - Manchester City (1 - 1)

See you next time,

Riko R.

Champions League Quarter Finals Predictions

The Quarter Finals stage of the Champions League is on its way and I will dedicate the first part of the post to offer an analysis based on "Hunchers.com" members' views for the first 2 games:

Fenerbahche vs. Chelsea (April 2nd 2008)
First,let's take a look on the consensus results.
As I'm writing this post it stands on
Game End - 1:2 (to Chelsea)
Half Time - 0:1 (to Chelsea)
The consensus result has a good history of success rate when the number of hunchers that participated in that specific challenge was around 10 and more and it currently stands on 9..
Huncher AmirF who's currently leading the community in the Champions League is predicting that Chelsea will win 0:2 and Huncher emart who is currently ranked 2nd in the Champions League category thinks that Chelsea is in good shape that they will be able to win 0:2 outside.
I'm still missing to see what more major hunchers in this field specifically and in general like Huncher motis has to say on this game before taking any decision.
So my current recommendation is:

1. Post a hunch saying 1:2 and wait
2. Come back to hunchers.com near the game time
3. If more 'market movers' are joining this challenge and move the consensus significantly, I will consider changning it. if not, I'm going with a 1:2 as the game result and a solid 0:1 as the half time result.

I will hunch accordingly



Arsenal vs. Liverpool (April 2nd 2008)
The current consensus result says:
Game End - 1:1
Half Time - 1:0 (to Arsenal)
The game end result is a good result to hunch since:
1. It looks reasobable since Arsenal is not in very good shape lately and it's Liverpool's last title chance
2. If we look at the distribution, we see that currently half of the hunchers are predicting that Arsenal will win, meaning that the risk level for hunching Draw will be above 1 to 2.00. This can earn good amount of points.
As for the half time result, the consensus result (1:0 to Arsenal) also looks like a good and solid hunch to take.
I also recommend checking out what Hunchers that lead in Premier League Category think on this game.
I will hunch accordingly

Hello World!

This is the first post in this blog. I don't know exactly how to start it, so I'll just jump right to the main topic which I want to discuss in this blog. It will be about sports, sports statistics and sports predictions. But I'm saving myself the right to discuss other topics every now and then.

See, I like sports stats very much. It was interesting to me ever since I was a little child. I remember when my old man use to come back form work holding the sports newspaper in his hands and I would go and jump on it, reading every number in every row and every column, later copying the digits to my notebook, calculating averages, sums and building the best soccer / basketball teams based on yesterday's scores.

Having said that, let me introduce the sports prediction league website me and my friends have built. It is called Hunchers.com and it is dedicated to the combination of sports statistics with user generated content. What this site tries to do it to predict the results of sporting events (games mainly) driven by the power of the wisdom of crowds. And the concept is really simple: If you are a sports fan, you register and start predicting the scores of games. We take your hunches throw them into a big pile along with other hunches (we will give you a better credit in this pile if you will prove yourself) and try to come with one unified conclusion on what will be the score.

I will talk about this website here and will bring interesting pieces of information for those of you that are interested, but I thought for my first post to do something interesting and try to choose the 5 most amazing NBA plays that made me shout when I saw them. So here they are:

1. "The Shot" - everybody knew the ball was going to Jordan. If Larry Bird said after Jordan's 63 vs. the Celtics that we saw "god disguised as Michael Jordan" I always think when I watch this shot that I'm sure that god stopped and looked and for this split of a second when Michael was in the air, deep in his heart, god wished that he was Michael Jordan.

2. "The Dunk" - John Starks dunking in the face of Grant, Pippen and Jordan. Simply the story of the underdog

3. "The Steal" - Larry Bird steals the ball in the conference final against the pistons in 1987.

4. "The Dunk #2" - Tom Chambers vs. the Knicks. What's amazing here is that it looked like he could fly at least 3 times higher with a little more effort

5. "13 points in 35 seconds" - Even if T-Mac would have thrown the ball in the opposite direction, it would still somehow find its way to the basket. amazing.

My apologies to those who didn't make it to the list, there are some that truly deserve it. One Last thing I want to say, since this is my first post, is that my name is not really Riko, it is just my "nom de plume" so I won't lose my day job. BTW, English is not my native language so my apologies for where I'm not clear enough.

Riko R.