Flutter CEO Peter Jackson has declared World Cup 2026 will be the biggest betting event ever. Global wagers on the competition could top $50 billion, according to analysts, up from $35 billion at Qatar 2022. The majority of bettors will inevitably lose money, but a fortunate or savvy few may be able to end up in net profit at the end of the tournament.
I wanted to run an experiment during the tournament to see whether the two leading AI chatbots, Gemini and ChatGPT, can turn a profit and how a human (me) can compete with them.
Gemini Showed Early Promise
I recently ran an experiment over 10 days, and Gemini came out on top. It generated a healthy 32.7% return on 10 wagers. This is obviously a very small sample size, so we cannot yet draw any conclusions about its effectiveness. It found a winning strategy by predicting tennis matches, so let’s see if it can transfer that to the World Cup.
My original interest in seeing how effective AI could be at recommending bets was piqued by a small experiment run by Angus McIntyre at the Bristol Post. He used Gemini to recommend soccer picks, but it could only pick one winner out of five bets.
In my small experiment, ChatGPT lost 35.7% of its (imaginary) money by mainly recommending bets in international soccer friendly matches. It did, however, manage to predict a winner in the first World Cup match, Mexico, and under 3.5 goals at odds of -115.
Two other chatbots, QuillBot and DeepAI, included in the 10-day experiment have been excluded this time. The former malfunctioned, recommending picks for matches that did not exist, while the latter took the moral high ground and refused to offer betting tips.
It will therefore be a three-way contest that kicks off on day two. I gave both Gemini and ChatGPT the following prompt: recommend one bet for matches on day two at the World Cup.
For simplicity, I took the odds at DraftKings for each pick, although to make consistent profit from sports betting, gamblers should really analyze odds more closely and shop around, according to Professors Robert Scott and Mikhail Sher.
Gemini
Day 2 Pick: Canada to Defeat Bosnia and Herzegovina (-120)
ChatGPT
Day 2 Pick: Canada to Defeat Bosnia and Herzegovina (-120)
My Pick
Day 2 Pick: Christian Pulisic to score anytime vs. Paraguay (+245)
I will add the results and new picks each day of the tournament, so check back to keep up to date with the progress.
