Six Tips to Help Pick the Football Champs

Six tips to help pick the football champs Part of the fun of the FIFA World Cup is supporting a team and trying to pick which nation will come out as the winner. But just as thinking tricks and traps can skew financial decisions, the same can be true for sporting decisions as well. Here are six tips that may help to calm the emotion and focus the mind. Join the discussion at B @eZonomics and f facebook.com/ING Dare to be different Brazil seems to be the bookmakers' favourite to win the FIFA World Cup. Don't overstate the importance of the recent past But are the hosts also your best choice Tame your national pride as champion? Remember, Brazil winning is not a certainty. It may well be a good idea to stake your pride on When it comes to making decisions an outsider. about money, emotion can often get in the way – think impulse shopping or overspending to get a "dream home". If it rains for three days in a row, we tend to overestimate the chance it will rain again tomorrow. Known as availability bias, this error can also sway our choice of World Cup champs. Our survey found that respondents seem to Add in the national pride we feel when our team competes and things get even more complicated. Before picking your FIFA World Cup winner, consult objective statistics to tame exaggerate the chances of the reigning champions Spain doing it again. your national pride - or "home bias" 1. as it is sometimes known. But remember, past performance is no guarantee of future results. 4 6. Don't be tricked Remember, knowledge is power by "patterns" Sometimes we see patterns where none exist. Players in casinos hungry for a win sometimes think they see When picking which team will win, it is patterns emerging in games of chance such as roulette or craps when, in helpful to know a little more than your friends who are trying to do the same. Give chance reality, each spin of the wheel and roll of the dice is independent. In football, don't be fooled by a pattern of goals or wins that is simply not there. About a quarter of respondents to our survey say they can't help but tell others who they are picking - and why – ahead of time. Known as information asymmetry, a chance People often confuse luck with skill. keeping information that a star player of a top side is in doubt to yourself, might put There is no doubt that the 2010 winner Spain is skillful but has luck also played you at an advantage. a part in their success. The answer is probably "yes", as it is for most sports teams. It might be the starting pool they are in, a call by a match official, a goal that just gets in or a star player who completes the competition without injury. Any team can get lucky. eZonomics For more information, visit www.cuponomics.com ING ING thinkforward IT 2.