Houston 2, Utah 1 North Carolina 3, Orlando 0 Washington 1, Reign 2 SkyBlue 2, Chicago 1 @59Amerinorsk, I am surprised you didn't go with your usual Chicago win/draws for everyone else prediction.
I have had mixed emotions about my predictions so far. Generally it seems when I have picked the wrong winner, I was somewhat pleased that the other team won the game, even though I lost the points. Wednesday's results were like that,so even though I did not predict either game, I was pleased with the results. So here are my 9/13-9/15 picks: HOU 1 UTA 2 NC 3 ORL 1 WAS 2 SEATAC 2 (Pinoe neutralizes the 14,000 fan advantage) NJ 2 CHI 1
Oh, right, I had that entered. Wrong predictor -- CoachJon, looks like you missed this week's mid-week games.
I figured Utah was due for a stinker, and since they already lost to Houston once, this would be a good bet to pick a Royals loss.
Yes l missed predicting Wednesday’s games. I went to watch a D3 woso game, Geneseo at RIT, and forgot about the NWSL games until it was too late to predict.
Hey, was it so easy? Next time I'll just have to give 6 goals to NC and call it a day! (@Smallchief had tried a 4-1, but he was too much shy ). With one match to go, scores for the week-end are spread so far between 2 and 5, with a peak at 4, I suppose. Nothing actually season-changing, apparently. The robot and @CoachJon leading the matchday so far, if I am not wrong (nailing the 2-2 draw was great, @CoachJon! ).
I only made 1 point from NJ-CHI, but on the other hands no-one but @Smallchief and @59Amerinorsk (who made 2 points each) did better that that and there even was a fair share of 0s from that game. I could have lost one more point to the robot or such, this week, but my lead keeps having a more than decent margin.
After today's games, the winner for the week is Smallchief with 9 points, followed by several with 8. Blissett lost ground to several, including a mere point to the robot, and remains in firm control of 1st place. (I know the NWSL says this is week 22, with week 21 having had no games due to a postponement, but in weeks with games, it's 21.)
My predictions for the mid-week games: NC 6 HOU 0 (I am serious! I am that kind of man, the one who can bet on Courage scoring 6 for three consecutive games. I'll admit that's the kind of gambles you can make when you're 5 points ahead, but after all a X-0 win by NC would be completely reasonable and that's what I'd predict anyway even if I'd choose a "safer" approach: so, by my point of view, I am just gambling the single point at stake between a 6-0 and a more realistic X-0 score). SEA 1 UTA 1 (when, at this point of the season, there are these kind of games, where basically the winner takes it all and the loser is close to losing all hopes, I've got the feeling that "fear" uses to emerge the winner: teams are much more worried about the potential consequence of a loss, than thrilled by the potential reward for a win. If I'd be completely consequent, I should predict a 0-0, but I somehow lost faith in this score: I am already gambling with NC-HOU, so I'll go for a "safer" 1-1 ).
I do wonder if there should be a compensation rule for blowouts... For example, consider the situation when one person predicts 2-1 while someone else predicts 4-0, and the game ends 7-1. Under current rules, player A would get 2pts while player B only got 1pt, even though most people would probably agree player B was closer to the real result. Maybe for next season, we can institute one extra rule where a prediction of a win by 3 or more is worth 1pt bonus if the real result is also a blowout in the correct direction?
I wouldn't count on it. Last time I suggested improving on the rules, crickets pretty much chirped and I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was a sore loser.
For my part, I sure didn't think that. On the contrary, in the last pair of seasons of this game I often noticed that the "guess the right number of goals scored by a team and get 1 point" is a rather counterintuitive rule, because it often means that a player who completely missed the W/L/D outcome of the game is given the same points as a player who guessed the outcome right, but with a way off-base score. There is a need to understand where these rules come from, though, and I guess @SiberianThunderT could be the most qualified "historian of this competition" to give some contest to us (you admitted it's the first time that you joined this competition, didn't you, @McSkillz?): from my understanding (but I actually wasn't there back then), they were introduced for the very reason because you complain about them, i.e. giving the players that are behind some other way to "make points" (but I could be wrong about that or not remember perfectly what had been explained to me at some point in the past). Any way you look at it, I am not sure if having the "goal scored" rule or not having it would influence that much the chance to catch up with competitors who are ahead (but it's just my impression: @cpthomas, who likes to discuss with data and not with human impressions, could make a comparative study about that). I wonder if having the "goal scored" rule being weighted less than the other rules could be a solution: for instance, having W/L/D outcome and goal difference weight 1 and "goal scored by one team" weight 0.5 could maybe feel more "fair" (after all, to correctly guess the goal difference, you have to make a reasonable prediction about both teams, and not just one, so it would make sense that it's worth two times as much). This would go along with the intuitive notion that, if a game ends 2-1, the guy predicting a 3-0 should make more points that the one predicting a 0-1: in the current system they both get 1 point.
NC 3 HOU 1 SEA 1 UTA 1 I'll wager that NC will go back somewhat toward its more wasteful ways and won't score 6 this game. Seatlle vs Utah should be a hard fought match.
Aw thanks @blissett I think too much about how others view me sometimes. Also @cpthomas is going out of his way to calculate and update this contest every week and there’s never any guarantee that this will always be a thing. So I won’t offer suggests anymore unless he requests them.
You're most probably right. It's me the one who went out of his way to predict a third consecutive 6-scorer.