HOW TO RUN A GROUP OR TOURNAMENT SIMULATION ON FOOTYSIMULATOR

HOW TO SELECT TEAMS FOR YOUR GROUP OR TOURNAMENT SIMULATION

If you are a subscriber, proceed in exactly the same way as if you were selecting teams for a match, but when you have selected 2 teams, you will continue to be allowed to select more teams up to a total of 12. Make sure all your selections are different.

Next, you have to decide whether the game is to be held home and away, on neutral ground, or hosted by one of the competitors. Only the first team selected can host the group in the latter case.

Finally, you must select how many times you wish the group to be played. The more simulations you run, the more realistic the overall predictions. However the more simulations you run, the longer this will take. So, be mindful of your connection speed before selecting a large number.

HOW TO SELECT A TOURNAMENT SIMULATION RATHER THAN A GROUP SIMULATION

Depending on the number of teams you have selected, you may have the additional option of running a tournament simulation. Examples include 4, 8, 12, 16 and 24 teams selected. The option Tournament will appear in the list of how many simulations to run. If you select this option it will play a best of 1 knock-out tournament using the home and away options you have already chosen. On the confirmation screen, you will have to select the method for deciding a drawn knockout match.

THE GROUP/TOURNAMENT SIMULATION PREVIEW SCREEN

The preview screen shows some basic details on the teams you have selected. You will see a representation of each team's attacking and defensive abilities plus each team's current FootySimulator world ranking.

The only options you have here are to go forwards or back. Click the kick-off button to start generating your virtual group. This will open in a new window so, if you have popup-blocker software installed on your PC, make sure it is disabled for this site.

If all of your teams are from the same continent, selecting them is much faster if you click one of the logos towards the top of the selection screen. This will limit the options in each drop-down box to countries currently playing in that confederation. To 'unfilter' your selection, simply click the FIFA logo. You can tell which filter is currently active by the different text colour and background.

HOW TO ANALYSE DATA FROM GROUP SIMULATIONS

This is the only section which is not virtually identical to the select a match option. All of the averages and odds from that have gone - what you see here is a league table, some goals per game statistics and some odds on how each team would perform in the group.

To illustrate what you'll see, here's a fictitious example of a group containing 4 teams. The group is to be played in a neutral country and each team plays each opponent 50 times - making 150 games in total.

The first part of this grid is a conventional league table - albeit with far more games in it than usual. Towards the right of the grid is a list of how many times each team came 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th.



Then comes a goals-per-game ratio to give you an inidcation of whether the group will be high scoring.

Goals Per Game = 2.6

Finally comes some betting analysis. Given that under most circumstances two teams qualify and two teams are eliminated, the columns mean

Odds to win the group
Odds to qualify
Odds not to qualify
Odds to finish bottom

	To Win Group	To Come 1st/2nd	To Come 3rd/4th	To Come 4th
Nigeria	9-4	2-5	13-8	12-1
Romania	4-6	1-4	13-5	15-2
Colombia	4-1	8-11	10-11	6-1
Uzbekistan	20-1	12-1	1-20	3-10

In the above example, Romania are warm favourites to win the group with Nigeria and Colombia nip and tuck for second place.

Note that the usual rules about controlling your odds display and values apply. That's done through the preferences screen.