Is there any interest in doing a Bundesliga prediction league like the one we did for the last season? The first league game is on August 9, so this would be a good time to start getting things together.
Count me in, guys. Don't know how it works, but guessing it's all about well-informed and educated predictions.
I'm in. I suggest we do it like the MLS prediction league. 2 pts. for getting the right result, extra .5 for right goal differential, another .5 for exact score. They also have a bonus for correctly predicting a 3+goal victory, but I'm not sure what it is. Other options are also acceptable.
Picking a tie is the easiest. If you give extra points for the right difference you automatically have a bonus, which is a little bit of a farce as it's not really possible to miss the right difference when predicting a tie. My favourite version is 1 pt for the right outcome (win/tie/loss) and 3 pts for the right result without any other criteria.
That's what I was envisioning. It shouldn't be too complicated, just a nice, straighforward 'call the score' set-up with a bonus for getting the final score exactly right. We can't all be MENSA members, after all.
Last year's counting was weird. Let's just count points - and not outcome and right results seperately. What about having one topic for all predictions instead of opening a new one every week as in the last season (though, that would contain the danger of a database crash)?
Sounds like a good idea. Either way we'd lose the data if there was another crash but I can save everything to a word document.
I suggest a weekly thread starting with a recap of the previous week. See the MLS prediction league for a model: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3453 I don't care how we do the points.
Keep it simple: 1 point for a correct pick (win, loss, or draw). Winner of the week is the one with the most points (with number of correct scores being a tie break). Winner at the end of the year is either the one with the most cumulative points, or the one who won the most weeks (this is easier, since a cumulative score of all points from all weeks need not be kept), or both.
That's not exactly what I call simple. Simple is one point for win/loss/draw and 3 for the correct result - then you need this as the one and only category. For your way of counting points you need three different categories (points/correct scores/most wins) - way too complicated I think, and also it doesn't really honor the difficulty of predicting a score correctly.
One problem with this (which I expressed earlier): Ties occur much less often that wins and losses, so if there is no compensation for picking a tie then no intellegent player ever would.
"That's not exactly what I call simple." Actually, I think it is the simplest version. The tabulator goes down each person's prediction list and for every correct result, the person gets a point. Most points (correct predictions) wins the week. Simple. If at the at end of the week, more than one person has the highest number of points, you go back and see who has predicted accurately the most scores as a tiebreak. So ostensibly, there is only going to be one calculation per contestant unless there's a tie between two or more contestants, in which case the second calculation (number of correct scores) would only have to be done for those who are tied (as opposed to all contestants. Under a 3/1 system, you have to make two calculations per contestant.
"it doesn't really honor the difficulty of predicting a score correctly." I think predicting the score correctly is mostly luck and, moreover, skews results. Under the 3/1 system, a person who predicts 7 out of 9 correctly (but gets no scores exactly right) earns the same number of points as the person who gets 3 out of 9 correctly (but lucks out and guesses two scores correctly). That does not seem fair, since I certainly believe the person who predicted 7/9 did a much better job than the person who predicted 3/9.
"three different categories . . . most wins" If you want to make this a season-long competition, you need some sort of cumulative scorekeeping device under any system. The only two that come immediately to mind are cumulative points over the course of the season, most "most wins" (and by that, I mean most weeks won, not most scores predicted, as that would be the same as cumulative points). The latter is easier, since it is a heck of a lot easier to keep a running total of weeks won as opposed to total points.
I agree with Wolfsburgh. You should get a small bonus for exact score. That's why the MLS pool is 2 for right result, 2.5 for guessing a tie, and 3 for exact score. Fairly simple and should minimize posters getting the same weekly result.