World Cup office pool rules?

[JohnnyRev]

I need some help in setting up a World Cup office pool. I want to limit it to the 16 teams that survive group play. Can anyone suggest a good set of rules for a "bracket" type pool. In other words, I don't want to just have 16 people each pull one name out of a hat, but I want the participants to pick the winner in each game all the way through the final. [I know this is the way the March Madness pools are done]. What I need is some advice on what weight to give each correct choice as the teams progress through the brackets.

Thank you in advance.

Your revolutionary friend,

JohnnyRev

[revsrock]

I need some help in setting up a World Cup office pool. I want to limit it to the 16 teams that survive group play. Can anyone suggest a good set of rules for a "bracket" type pool. In other words, I don't want to just have 16 people each pull one name out of a hat, but I want the participants to pick the winner in each game all the way through the final. [I know this is the way the March Madness pools are done]. What I need is some advice on what weight to give each correct choice as the teams progress through the brackets.

Thank you in advance.

Your revolutionary friend,

JohnnyRev


I would award the following points

Round of 16-2 points
Round of 8- 4 Points
Semi's- 8 points
Final Game- 16 points
Tie Breaker-either total goals in the Knockout round or final score in Final

[Chowda]

I did an NCAA pool while my carrier was in the med in '03 (I was transferring soon, had no real job, and caught nearly every game:) ). How we did it was we assigned point values for each game with the finals having the most points. We also had it where anybody could fill out as many brackets as they wanted. I filled out three brackets and came in first and third because I had my good friends at Marquette going to the final four in both sheets.

The problem with doing this for the world cup is that the round of sixteen isn't set up until the group phase is over.

This would be controversial if, for instance, someone picked say England to come in first place in their group and go all the way to the finals. Then, they came in second and went on to the finals. That person would have England winning specific games on one side of the bracket, but wouldn't get the points because they were winning games on the other side.

My advice would be to have everyone predict every match in the group stages (might be fun with tie being an option) with a set value for each game. Then, either everyone picks who they think is going to win it all or draw countries out of a hat (too many people might pick Brazil) and assign point values for each round.

[peabrainedidiot]

I've done:

pic the 2 from each group-10 points for each that goes through
5 points for round of 16
10 points for round of 8
15 for semi's
25 for final
50 to pick the winner

it addresses the group stage. still haven't figured out a good way to give an incentive to pick upsets. something like using fifa ranking or betting odds, etc:
top seed -5 points
2nd 7 points
3rd-10 points
4th- 20 pionts

[jrkumor]

Yahoo! does a great one for the NCAA tourney, that is what we use at work. Maybe another website, if not Yahoo!, will carry something similar online.

Only downside, everyone has to get a Yahoo! ID

[a517dogg]

Why not do two separate tables?

One draw, you pick the outcomes of each game in the group stages, and who will place 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th in each group. Have that be one competition, and then you can just set the second draw up march-madness style after the group phase is over and the tableau is set.

I would award points on the tableau this way:
Round of 16: 2 points
Quarters: 4 points
Semis: 8 points
Third place: 10 points
Final: 16 points.

[JohnnyRev]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm thinking them over.

Meanwhile, there's a free Excel spreadsheet available online that keeps track of the groups, etc., when you fill in the score of each game played. I've tried it out with fake scores, and it works well.

http://www.excely.com/world-cup-2006.html

The download is a zip file that turns into an excell spreadsheet.

[beryl420]

For the last worldcup, ESPN.com ran a free contest doing exactly as you describe, and I'm sure that it will be there again. IT permitted you to form your own groups or join a random group

The big advantage is that someone who is interested in participating, but not all that knowledgeable about the sport can click on the various countries to look at evaluations of each of the teams.

I'm sure it will be up in a couple of months.