All's well that ends well

The game for the 3rd place today was played in St Petersburg, which means that Achilles the deaf cat, who lives in that city, had to make a prediction. He hesitantly predicted a win by Belgium and closed his World Cup prediction season with a success after three failures in a row. All's well that ends well.

Of course, tomorrow is the big final and we will know who the champion is... of the World Cup and -more importantly- of the Bolão da Copa. Currently, at the top of our standings, LucasA is still 1st, pcasal3 is 2nd, and Papa Patrick is 3rd. Here are the complete standings.

France is the first finalist

Achilles the deaf cat predicted that Belgium would win..., so naturally France advanced into the final.

We all will miss this guy

The win by France broke the tie in the third place and shuffled things around at places 2 and 3: LucasA is still 1st but pcasal3 moved up to the 2nd place and Papa Patrick is now 3rd. The complete standings are here.

Sweden and England

In the first of today's games Sweden played against Switzerland. None of these teams ought to be in the World Cup at this stage, so it was efficient to have a game to eliminate at least one of them. Today it was Switzerland's turn. The game was played in St. Petersburg and, therefore, it was one of those games on which Achilles customarily makes predictions. Today he was mistaken again and Cabeça de Macaco was briefly amused by this turn of events... but only until he found out that in the second game England defeated Colombia in the penalties. Terrible news for our beloved monkey mascot, who had predicted that Colombia would win the World Cup!

A notable event in the Colombia-England game was the penalty awarded to Kane after what looked more like an offensive foul commited by himself. In any case, Kane is now the top scorer in the World Cup with 6 goals.

In today's standings, LucasA is 1st, Papa Patrick 2nd, and Will and Carlos (TCW) 3rd. A Man Like Trump is just one point behind, on the 4th place. The complete standings are here.

Achilles strikes out

Groups C and D came to an end today. In group C, Peru put continent-hopping Australia in their place and beat them by 2-0. France and Denmark tied 0-0, making it the first game without goals in the World Cup. In group D, Croatia won against Iceland and Argentina against Nigeria. The win by Argentina was correctly predicted by 107 participants, including Cabeça de Macaco, but not by Achilles the deaf cat, who had so far had 100% accuracy in his World Cup predictions but chose Nigeria this time.

No match for Achilles

As in the last several days, Papa Patrick and Micaela are in the first two positions. Iliana and Will and Carlos (TCW) are tied in the third place. The complete standings are here.

Uruguay nomá

All of today's games ended 1-0 and there were no major surprises. The 1-0 win of Uruguay against Saudi Arabia was maybe the most boring game of the World Cup so far but as a result we now know that both Russia and Uruguay advance to the second stage. Although we still don't know in what order (maybe Achilles does).

Luis Suarez scores while four defenders watch in awe. Meanwhile, the Saudi goalkeeper is asking Diego Godin for an autograph.

In the standings there were some interesting movements. There is now a tie at the top: Micaela and Papa Patrick share the 1st place with 118 points and they are followed closely by Angie and Chepa, who are tied on 3rd place with 106 points. What about you? Search for your name in the standings here.

Achilles gets it right again

Today's games started out with a surprise loss by Colombia against Japan. Surprising indeed as only 4 Bolão participants predicted that Japan would win. Then Senegal won against Poland, as expected by 27 participants, and Russia against Egypt, as predicted by 44 participants, and by Achilles, the deaf cat... Actually, who knows what he predicted:

Achilles was tasked with predicting the winner in the Russia-Egypt encounter later tonight. The cat, as soon as he was presented with the two bowls, rushed to eat from the Russian bowl. But in a mood to puzzle the spectators, Achilles also ate from the bowl with the Egyptian flag. While the organizers are confident that he predicted a Russia win, is the cat hinting at a draw? Maybe he was predicting that Russia would score first but Egypt would equalize later? Or maybe he was just hungry and latched on to whatever food he got, without caring about which bowl he ate from first.

In any case, it was a bad day for Cabeça de Macaco, who didn't score a single point today. In fact, his predicted final is Colombia-Germany, which didn't look like a bad choice ex-ante but has lost some of its appeal given the last results.

It is a sad day for macacos

Congratulations to Papa Patrick and Micaela who continue to lead the standings. Chepa has now joined them in the 3rd place. Cabeça de Macaco is down to position 144. The complete standings are here.

More surprises

Wow. What is happening? 

After the comfortable 5-0 win for Russia in the opening game nothing is going as expected: France barely won against Australia, Argentina tied with Iceland, Germany lost with Mexico, Brazil tied with Switzerland...

Is there an evil plot to attack the Bolão? Who is behind it? I'm sure it must be a friend of Achilles the deaf cat.

Teams are realizing that they shouldn't have drunk all those cases of vodka sent by this man on the first day of the competition

Only three people predicted that Germany would lose to Mexico and only 12 predicted the tie between Brazil and Switzerland.

Papa Patrick is now 1st, Micaela is 2nd, and Maud 3rd. Cabeça de Macaco is currently 84th. The complete standings are here.

Another surprise: Neymar wears his spaghetti from lunch on his head