Psychic' octopus Paul picks Spain to win World Cup
Viva Espana ... "psychic" octopus Paul picks Spain to win over the Netherlands. Photo: AFP
Let the fiesta begin. Spain will win the football World Cup for the first time in their history, according to Paul, the "psychic" octopus with a perfect prediction record.
The eight-legged oracle, who has become a World Cup sensation by correctly predicting all six Germany games, very quickly plumped for Spain live on national German television.
Earlier, the two-year-old mollusc medium also said that Germany, his country of residence, would defeat Uruguay in the third-place play-off game.
Making his prediction ... Paul picks Germany to beat Uruguay. Photo: AFP
In the now familiar routine, two boxes were lowered into his tank, each containing a mussel and the flags of the two opposing teams.
The tentacled tipster went straight to the Spanish box, wrenched open the lid and gobbled the tasty morsel.
But the art of football predicting has become a dangerous job for the English-born clairvoyant cephalopod with some bitter German fans threatening to turn him into sushi after he predicted a semi-final defeat for the Mannschaft.
Paul's home, an aquarium in western Germany, has received death-threat emails saying "we want Paul for the pan", said entertainment supervisor Daniel Fey.
"Since yesterday our colleagues have kept a very close eye on Paul," Fey added.
No less an authority than Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero has called for octopus bodyguards.
"I am concerned for the octopus ... I am thinking of sending him a protective team," joked Zapatero on Radio Cadena Ser.
Spanish Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian has called for the creature to be given an "immediate" free transfer to Spain to "ensure his protection."
Stung by Paul's "treachery" at picking Spain over Germany in the semi-final, some sections of the 350,000-strong crowd watching the game on giant screens in Berlin sang anti-octopus songs.
The honour of Paul's mother was called into question, according to witnesses.
Friday's prediction is expected to be the last for Paul, who in octopus terms is a pensioner, at the grand old age of two-and-a-half. Octopuses generally live three years at the most.
AFP
8 comments:
Paul the Psychic octopus picked Spain to win the final. Umm, I must place some big bet on this, Fat Tat loh. But Paul has a famous competitor which is also an octopus (forgot what name) which picked Netherlands and there is another famous fortune teller called Mani the parakeet from Singapore which also predict Netherlands to be the winner. How, Dali? This reminds me of a game to chose a fund manager. Thousands of fund managers around the world were asked to toss a coin, those getting a head will go to the next round, and again the winners with a head will carry on with the game and so on until a champion was found. There will be scores of fund managers who got 20, 30,50 of heads in a row. So the sole winner finally got 100 heads in a row and he was proclaimed the best fund manager in the world. Those who got 20, 30, 50 etc heads were also declared as some of the best fund managers in the world.
I predict Netherlands in the office pool before the tourney began on June 10. I hope Holland does win but is time to hedge some Spanish bet....
A read on the article written by Warren Buffet will be good. "The Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville"
The real winner is the Octupus with the name Paul.
Man when they lost their instincts or too engross to win will always revert to a medium. It shows how secure of human in term of EQ.
Holland 2 Spain 1, Holland New World Champoins..that's my prediction. Holland would not allow Spain the time and space that Germany gave to Spain.
In a match, there are 3 possibilities. To get 7 predictions right, the odds is 3 to the power of 7 which means that you have one chance in 2187!
Ben,
Since football is such a popular game in the world and the world cup is the biggest event, I am sure there are a lot of people making predictions. Say there are 10,000 people trying to predict who will be the eventual champion, taking your figure of the chance of getting right is 1:2187. There will be 4 or 5 people, or animal who would have got it right 7 times in a row [10000*(1/2187)], wouldn't there? Further more, if a winner must be declared each game, even with penalty kicks if necessary, there should be 78 people [10000*1/(0.5)^7]who would have got it right 7 times in a row. If my maths is right (not very sure also), then the feat of Paul the octopus just amounts to a pure chance?
Seems Paul was right Bro and Spain won 1-0. Holland with 8 yellow cards and 1 red plus giving a kung fu style kick to a Spanish player on the chest does not deserve to be champions in this World Cup.
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