How to win a Scorito pool

With the European Football Championship around the corner, football pools are increasing in popularity. Although having knowledge often helps in these kinds of pooles, it is often the case that the winner of the pool at work, with friends or with family is someone who is not a football expert at all. Michel van de Velden, Associate Professor of Statistics at Erasmus School of Economics, explains how this is possible.

Van de Velden has previously researched the use of statistical models in predicting football matches. In his "World Cup betting guide", he combines two models to make the most accurate prediction possible. Still, predicting remains tricky, the associate professor argues: 'The fact that there is relatively little scoring makes predicting a winner in football more difficult than in sports where goal difference is much higher and can be more apart.'

Apart from the fact that predicting football matches is very difficult, there are some things that people often overlook when filling in a pool. For example, people still often fill in a draw in the pool phase, while only 20% of matches end in a draw. Moreover, during a championship, countries often play it safe, so a result like 3-0 is much less common than a final score of 1-0.

Michiel van de Velden is Associate Professor of Statistics at Erasmus School of Economics. His expertise mainly lies within the field of exploratory data analysis, with a strong focus on data visualisation.