{"slug": "show-hn-fifa-2026-bracket-predictor-see-live-crowd-as-picks-come-in", "title": "Show HN: FIFA 2026 bracket predictor – see live crowd % as picks come in", "summary": "A developer built a FIFA 2026 bracket predictor that shows live crowd percentages as picks come in, solving the complex best-thirds seating logic by implementing FIFA's 495-row lookup table after AI hallucinated bracket rules. The tool uses bipartite matching for incomplete brackets and switches to the official lookup once all third-place teams are chosen.", "body_md": "Built this on top of a side project (quizzy.earth).\n\nThe interesting engineering problem was the best-thirds seating logic – FIFA pre-publishes a 495-row lookup table (Annexe C) covering every possible combination of third-place qualifiers. AI kept hallucinating bracket rules so I ended up reading the actual regulations PDF. Each of the 495 scenarios has up to 24,000 valid bracket arrangements; FIFA pre-commits to one per scenario so there's no ambiguity on the night.\n\nFor a half-finished bracket I fall back to bipartite matching (seat the most-constrained team first). The moment all 8 thirds are chosen it switches to the official lookup.\n\nNo sign-up. Anonymous picks. Curious what HN thinks the brackets looks like.\n\nComments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48702980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48702980)\n\nPoints: 1\n\n# Comments: 0", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-fifa-2026-bracket-predictor-see-live-crowd-as-picks-come-in", "canonical_source": "https://quizzy.earth/p/0Dpwk5TjHe/fifa-world-cup-2026-predict-the-bracket-live", "published_at": "2026-06-27 23:57:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-28 00:04:29.903190+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["FIFA", "quizzy.earth", "Annexe C"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-fifa-2026-bracket-predictor-see-live-crowd-as-picks-come-in", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-fifa-2026-bracket-predictor-see-live-crowd-as-picks-come-in.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-fifa-2026-bracket-predictor-see-live-crowd-as-picks-come-in.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-fifa-2026-bracket-predictor-see-live-crowd-as-picks-come-in.jsonld"}}