Nick Wright

100% of the time moved on.

So if you win at least two games in the group stage, you're going to move on.

That, of course, makes sense because if you're top two in your group, you move on.

And if you're top three, you might.

Teams that got four or more points.

So all that means is at least one win and one draw.

99.8% of them moved on to the knockout round.

Okay?

So if you're a Team USA fan, if they win their first match against Paraguay, almost assuredly all they will need in their final two matches against Australia and Turkey is just one draw.

Where it gets dicey,

in his simulation was with at three points which the way you can get three points is three draws or one victory and two losses 67 percent qualify and at less than three points five percent well it's two points five percent qualify and I think it's zero and one it's zero percent so

If you're trying to determine will your team or any team, if you're trying to bet it, advance past the group stage, what you need to ask yourself very simply is, do I expect them to win at least one game in the group?

If so, they have a good shot.

If you expect them to win at least one game and then also get at least one more draw, they're almost assuredly through to the knockout round.

Now, let me add one other thing here.

Who you get

in the knockout round is going to be determined by how well you do in your group.

So the first place teams of certain groups will play the third place teams of other groups.

So you are incentivized to do well, but there is a little bit of randomness.

where you win your group and a team that's awesome struggles in theirs but gets through all of a sudden they're the third place team in their group they could be an excellent team so that's the randomness of it whatever so we will get to the teams that i think can actually win this tournament because the other thing about the world cup very few countries have ever actually won it