World Cup 2026 · Market vs Model
The full Polymarket board (all 48 teams, every stage) set against two venue-neutral simulations of the real bracket: an Elo Monte Carlo and a Voros McCracken run. Where the market and both models disagree is the whole story.
Honest caveat up front: a pure-Elo simulation is structurally top-heavy (its top two, Spain and Argentina, hold 44.7% of the title vs the market's 24.3%), so treat the favorite-side "edges" as a strength read, not a license to hammer the chalk. Your own principle, fade the shortest price, is the counterweight.
Poly Win% column that had been typed into the workbook for only 9 favorites, and those nine were normalized among themselves, so Spain read as 33%. The complete board (Win Group, Make R32, R16, QF, SF, Final, Win) puts Spain and France tied at 15.7% to win it all, which actually agrees with Fogle's 2.8 tie and reverses the earlier "market splits them 2 to 1" reading.To compare against the market at every stage, the ratings need to become probabilities. That requires a tournament simulation.
1 / (1 + 10^(-ΔElo/400)), with a draw model in the group stage that widens for even sides and shrinks for mismatches.Every team: market, the Elo model, and the Voros model on the title. Click a row to expand the full stage ladder (market, Elo, Voros). Sort any column. The 2-Model Read flags where both models move the same way against the market: BOTH BACK (both at least 1pt over market), BOTH FADE (both at least 1pt under), or SPLIT (the models disagree, stand down). HOST and +600 to +1500 still apply.
"Edge" is model minus market in percentage points on the title. Positive (green) = the model makes the team more likely to win than the market prices. Negative (red) = the market prices it higher than the model supports. Host rows: a large market-over-model gap is the priced home premium, not a fade.
The same 40,000-sim bracket, re-run with the Voros McCracken match engine instead of Elo. Group games use Voros win/draw/loss; knockouts use P(win) + ½·P(draw). Venue-neutral, like the Elo model, so the two are directly comparable. The point isn't a third vote; it's a disagreement screen.
Voros and Elo correlate 0.93 on team strength, so they're not independent witnesses; they're two calibrations of the same results-trained signal. Per your own integration memo, the right use of agreement is to stand down when they split, and to treat agreement as a reason to look harder, never as an automatic bet. Reading the title board through both:
| Contender | Market | Elo MC | Voros | Two-model read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Argentina | 8.6% | 18.9% | 11.9% | BOTH BACK Voros tempers Elo's inflation, still over market |
| Portugal | 9.4% | 4.6% | 3.2% | BOTH FADE name-brand premium, both models well under |
| France | 15.7% | 13.6% | 8.9% | BOTH FADE co-favorite both models price lower |
| England | 10.8% | 7.2% | 12.6% | SPLIT Voros backs, Elo fades, stand down |
| Brazil | 8.1% | 5.1% | 9.5% | SPLIT Voros backs, Elo fades, stand down |
Voros's real gift here is humility: it flattens the Elo model's top-heavy favorites toward the market's shape, which makes the surviving disagreements more trustworthy. Argentina (both back) and Portugal / France (both fade) are the durable signals; England and Brazil are noise until the models stop splitting. And every one of these stays a lens, because two results-trained models are not the lineup-and-injury read the market already has.
Elo rates Argentina the 2nd-strongest team in the world (2114, behind only Spain). The market prices them 5th to win it (8.6%, about +1063). The model makes them a co-favorite at 18.9%. They sit in your +600 to +1500 value band, and unlike the other teams in that band, the model is above the market, not below.
Every favorite the model fades is a marquee side: Portugal (market 9.4% vs model 4.6%), England (10.8 vs 7.2), Germany (5.5 vs 2.4), Brazil (8.1 vs 5.1). Elo has them 6th, 4th, 10th, and 5th. This is your "betting reputation over form" warning rendered as a price: the market is a tier more optimistic on the famous teams than their Elo supports.
The venue-neutral model is the measuring stick. USA is the headline: the market gives them 46.3% to reach the Round of 16, the model only 14.2%, because by Elo the USA is the weakest team in Group D (behind Turkey 1911, Paraguay 1833, Australia 1777). That 32-point gap is almost entirely the home premium the market is paying. But it doesn't generalize: Mexico (model 59.9% to reach R16 vs market 52.1%) and Canada (47.8% vs 40.4%) are genuinely well placed in soft groups, so the model likes them even with no home edge. The "hosts" aren't one bet.
Your principles say value clusters at +600 to +1500 (a 6.25% to 14.3% implied chance). Four teams live there: England, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil. The model backs exactly one of them, Argentina, and fades the other three. The band is where to look; it's not the edge itself.
The model's two largest "backs" are Spain (+10.0) and Argentina (+10.3), the two shortest non-France prices. But a pure-Elo model concentrates probability on the best teams more than markets do, and your own rule says fade the shortest price. So Spain's +10 is mostly the model being top-heavy, while Argentina's +10 also carries a genuine market-vs-Elo tiering disagreement. If you trust one favorite-side number, trust Argentina's, and treat Spain's as "strong, not underpriced."
The process you like, applied to this model before anyone bets it.
The market is a tier high on name brands and is paying a clear home premium for the USA. Argentina is the one place where a complete market and a results-based model genuinely disagree on tier, not just on a point or two. The host story splits cleanly: USA is premium, Mexico and Canada are real.
Conceded: Spain's edge is mostly top-heaviness, so it's downgraded to "strong, not value." The host gap is correctly labeled a premium that exists, not proof the USA is a fade or a back. Mid-tier advancement numbers carry wider error bars.
Survives: Argentina as the one tier-level market-vs-Elo disagreement (true even after discounting top-heaviness, because it's a relative gap between two favorites, not an absolute-favorite inflation). The name-brand fades (Portugal, England, Germany, Brazil all priced above Elo). And the USA premium as a real, quantified feature of the board. The model is a lens for finding disagreements, and three of them are worth a second look.
ratings_analysis/Companion: WC2026_Ratings_Analysis.html (the first report: distribution, confederations, group-of-death, and the owl/potato/judge pass that first flagged these two data gaps).