Good Wednesday morning, TSFers. It’s a rainy one here in D.C. with storms rolling through this evening (because that’s what it does in the summer) and then temperatures spiking back up towards and into the 90s. Fun. More importantly, it is one day until the World Cup.
If it matters to you: nope, I’m still not feeling the hype. Maybe the kickoff whistle in Mexico-South Africa will do it for me. Sweden manager Graham Potter is in the spirit!
Out of curiosity, will any of y’all be betting on the World Cup? I don’t do sports betting, so I’ve pretty much never talked about it on TSF. But I realized that some of you folks might and was, well, curious! Even though I don’t bet on sports, I do enjoy listening to the Bet the Process sports gambling podcast with Jeff Ma (from the MIT Blackjack team of 21 fame) and Rufus Peabody (one of the top professional sports gamblers in the world). It’s fascinating to learn about how they approach and analyze sports.
Not surprisingly, they did a World Cup episode that I listened to this morning. It was interesting! The guest was Ted Knutson, founder of StatsBomb and an Arsenal supporter to boot, and they went beyond just betting stuff into football data and coaching analysis, too.
