For karma’s sake, we’ll have a bet on the USA when the Stars and Stripes take on Ghana in their World Cup opener today (6 p.m. ET, ESPN), but numbers produced by AccuScore suggest it’s not necessarily a smart wager.
The U.S. won just 20.7 percent of AccuScore’s 10,000 game simulations, meaning bettors should be getting nearly 4-to-1 on the Americans today, so we’re certainly not getting a bargain at the +185 or +190 being offered in Las Vegas.
If you’re cold-hearted enough to go against the U.S. in a game they pretty much have to win, you can get a very nice price on Ghana, +160 at William Hill, based on AccuScore analysis.
The following chart lists the odds from the two Las Vegas sports books, along with implied probability of those odds, compared to AccuScore’s forecast and the odds into which that forecasts translates.
| Result | WH odds | implied % | LVH odds | implied % | AS odds | AS forecast |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | +185 | 35.1 | +190 | 34.5 | +383 | 20.7 |
| Ghana | +160 | 38.7 | +145 | 40.8 | +119 | 45.6 |
| Draw | +215 | 31.8 | +235 | 29.9 | +197 | 33.7 |
Handicapper Al Hain-Cole, over at our friends at Goal.com – a sister website of Sporting News – writes of Ghana, “While they sealed their place in Brazil courtesy of an emphatic 7-3 aggregate play-off victory over Egypt that included a memorable 6-1 win on home turf, James Kwesi Appiah's men have been far more impressive in defense than up front recently.
“Prior to last week's 4-0 friendly victory over South Korea, the African side had scored just five goals in the previous nine games, the last of which were consecutive 1-0 defeats against Montenegro and Netherlands.
“This lack of cutting edge is sure to be tested by a resolute American side in Natal, where the forecast of heavy rain is likely to restrict free-flowing football at either end, just as we saw when Cameroon met Mexico in similar conditions at the same stadium on Friday.”
The lean from Hain-Cole is ‘No’ on the ‘Will both teams score’ prop, a bet that would have paid out in five of the Americans' previous eight games and nine of Ghana's last 10. Backing that side of the prop requires bettors to lay -145 at William Hill U.S., though, a less favorable price than Hain-Cole is finding outside of Vegas.
The average score in AccuScore simulations is Ghana 1.1 to United States 0.6, suggesting a play on UNDER 2.5 goals (-125). Hain-Cole’s analysis seems to be in agreement with that wager.
Another prop at William Hill U.S. has Jozy Altidore +300 to score a goal today, which implies he has a 25 percent chance to hit the back of the net. But he scored in just 14 percent of AccuScore simulations, and if the projections are correct, laying -360 on the ‘no’ side of that prop is the better value.