{"id":905,"date":"2018-02-09T08:11:14","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T08:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/?p=905"},"modified":"2019-02-09T11:17:24","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T11:17:24","slug":"6-nations-9-who-will-win-in-2018-week-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/6-nations-9-who-will-win-in-2018-week-2\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Nations #9 – Who will win in 2018? – Week 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2018 6 Nations is underway and all of my predictions for week 1 turned out to be correct<\/a> (just!) with the help of an amazing drop goal drop goal by Johnny Sexton.\u00a0 This means that out of 37 matches I have used rankings to make predictions, 30 have been correct.<\/p>\n

World Rugby’s goal is that rankings can be used as a predictive tool.\u00a0 The idea is to take each team’s curre\"\"nt ranking and add 3 points to teams playing at home.\u00a0 Whoever has the higher ranking is then expected to win but the closer the rankings, the closer the game is expected to be.\u00a0 The current World Rugby rankings as of 7th February 2018 is shown to the right along with their ranking points and the change (if any) from the previous week.<\/p>\n

Last week, I broke down my previous predictions into 3 groups as below and the updated numbers are:-<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Where the ranking gap was less than 3 points – Out of 11 matches, 7 were correctly called.<\/li>\n
  2. Where the ranking gap was between 3 & 6 points – Out of 9 matches, 6 were correctly called.<\/li>\n
  3. Where the ranking gap was 7 points or more – out of 17 matches, all were correctly called.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These figures are \"\"shown by the black line in the next chart.\u00a0 What I did here was build a logistic regression model to estimate the probability that the prediction would be correct given a certain ranking gap and this shown by the green bars (shaded differently for each of the 3 groups above).\u00a0 Such a model allows me to add an additional feature to my predictions, the chances of my predictions being correct.<\/p>\n

    You can see these probabilities in the next table which lists my predictions for the 2018 6 Nations along with actual results.\u00a0 As of now, it is only week 2 that can be counted as a true prediction with the other weeks treated as indicative for now.\u00a0 This is because World Rugby will update the ranking points after each week which of course will lead to different predictions.<\/p>\n

    Looking back at week 1, Wales v Scotland was supposed to be a coin toss but much\"\" to the disappointment of the Scottish fans, Scotland did not turn up and Wales had an easy romp in the end.\u00a0 Ireland were supposed to dispatch France without too much trouble but in the end, they needed an extraordinary drop goal in the 82nd minute to win it.\u00a0 Only England performed as expected.<\/p>\n

    For week 2, my predictions are for 3 home wins without too much fuss.\u00a0 Note the ranking gap in all 3 games exceeds 7 points and so far I am 17 out of 17 for such matches.\u00a0 There is always a first time though and as an English fan, I just hope it is not at Twickenham!<\/p>\n

    That aside, these predictions are pointing to an England v Ireland grand slam decider in the last week.\u00a0 Of course we now have bonus points as well and whilst I have no grounds for predicting bonus points, I have constructed a provisional league table with the following system.\u00a0 Where the ranking gap is less than 7 points, the expected losing team gets a losing bonus point and where the ranking gap is 14 points or m\"\"ore, the winning team gets a 4 try bonus point.\u00a0 This results in the following table.\u00a0 Whilst this shows England winning a Grand Slam, if you multiply England winning probabilities for the 5 games, you find their probability of winning a Grand Slam is only 50%.\u00a0 Personally I would surprised if there was a Grand Slam in 2018.<\/p>\n

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    The 2018 6 Nations is underway and all of my predictions for week 1 turned out to be correct (just!) with the help of an amazing drop goal drop goal by Johnny Sexton.\u00a0 This means that out of 37 matches I have used rankings to make predictions, 30 have been correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[11,14,12,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-archive","8":"tag-6-nations","9":"tag-forecasts","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sport-analytics","12":"entry","13":"override"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}