There's all of one week until the season starts and I haven't seen any mention yet of a Weekly Prediction League. Are we going to have one this year?
I have forgotten the name of the gentlemen (and his wife!) who organized this venture the last TWO years. He hasn't been on the boards since the end of last season. If he isn't to return, we need another volunteer to keep up the statistics, not an easy chore. Anyone want to volunteer?
I will take it, though I do not know the way... Hey, all, If we can decide on a format, I can do the compilation and scoring. I may have to hand off to someone for a couple of weeks in July, but I can set up the spreadsheet and so forth. IIRC, our scoring was: 2pts for the correct winner/draw +1 for correct score There was a blowout bonus, too, right? Let's get the predictions and the sticky going! G.
Guinho -- You da man!!!! Many thanks in advance. And, if jlo and themrs return perhaps they'll be willing to help out again as well. I'm a bit fuzzy on the scoring system myself. I believe there was also a +1 bonus for picking a 3 or more goal victory. And, wasn't there some way to earn a half point?? At the end of last season our weekly threads had been relegated to "MLS Fans". I was among those who expressed a significant distaste for that move. I'm hoping we can successfully lobby to keep the competition here in the Major League Soccer forum. On the sticky front, the way things worked last year (at least after one of the Big Crashes) was to have a "MLS WPL Master Thread" (which was eventually given a sticky). Then as weekly threads were created, they were linked to from the Master Thread. That way participants could subscribe to the single thread and not miss out on the weekly ones. Does that sound like a good plan to folks once again?
Deciding on the scoring system.. Hey, all, Unless one of the mods vetos this plan, I'd like to take suggestions for scoring formats through Thursday evening. On Friday I'll post a poll on what seem to be the top 4 options, judging by the comments, with voting to close at 4:06 EST. I'd like to suggest the mods give us a sticky. I'm not fussy whether we're out here or in fans, I'll find it either way, and if others get lost, that just makes it easier for me to stay in the top division G.
I'd like to suggest the following format or a variant on it: 2 (or 3, perhaps) pts for correct winnner/draw +1 pt for correct GD +1 pt for correct score +1 pt for correct prediction of a blowout. I think that that gives more of a bonus for correct score than last year, but frankly, I think most of the top folks got there by predicting a lot of 1:0 games, so I'd like to give the brave souls who predict 3:2 correctly more rewards for their efforts. This also means a correctly predicted draw automatically gets one more point than a correct prediction of a win. G.
Here I am. I've been in stealth mode all winter. I wanted to wait and see if anyone had any interest in doing this again this year. FlashMan, I am wounded. So easily forgotten. Guinho, if you want to run this thing this year, you are welcome to it. I'll just sit back and enjoy the extra free time.
definitely not forgotten!!! in fact, you'll always be "sir" jlo to me! of course, i've always been bad with names. guinho's scoring system sounds good to me. i give it a thumbs up.
Thanks for taking over the thread. Ahhh...I have my man back! You know soccer can get like another woman only you can't kick a soccer tables butt. Looking forward to another year.
I'd like to participate. Personally, I don't like giving bonus points for BOTH correct goal differential and correct score. According to the system posted by Guinho, you'd wind up with some of these as the results... Assuming 2 pts for result and the 3 possible bonuses he mentioned... Prediction, Actual Score, Points Earned 0-0, 0-0, 4 pts 0-0, 1-1, 3 pts 1-0, 1-0, 4 pts 1-0, 2-1, 3 pts 1-0, 3-1, 2 pts 3-0, 3-0, 5 pts 3-0, 4-1, 4 pts 3-0, 5-1, 3 pts 3-0, 2-0, 2 pts It doesn't seem right that you can earn as many or more bonus points as you can game points. Here's the point in my book -- if person A correctly predicts 4 of the 5 games (no correct scores) vs. person B correctly predicts 3 games w/ 1 correct score (non blowout) vs. person C correctly predicts 2 games as blowouts and gets one of them with the right score. Person A winds up with 8 points Person B winds up with 8 points Person C winds up with 9 points That doesn't seem right. I'd vote for a system where the correct score got you approximately half the points on top of getting the correct result -- maybe slightly more than half. Perhaps 5 points for correct result and 3 additional for a correct score. This is the system we used in the first round of the champions league predicitions. It worked pretty well over there. In the same situation explained above... Person A winds up with 20 points. Person B winds up with 18 points. Person C winds up with 13 points.
"A thousand kisses buys my heart from me, And pay them at they leisure, one by one What is ten hundred touches unto thee? Are they not quickly told , told and quickly gone? Say for non-payment that the debt should double, Is twenty hundreed kisses shuch a trouble?"
As far as I remember, this is how it went last year (I post this because someone asked, and not because I favor the system): 2 points if you got the winner or correctly picked a draw 1 point bonus if you got the exact score half a point bonus if you got the correct goal differential 1 point bonus if you correctly predicted a blowout (win by 3 or more). The blowout bonus was cumulative with the exact score bonus, but replaced the goal differential bonus. The possible scores for any given game were 2, 2.5, 3 or 4. Four was only possible if you predicted the exact score of a blowout, which rarely happened.
At the end of last season, dawgpound suggested that we do something different with the divisions. His idea was that we have everyone start out in the division they finished last year (which would mean newcomers started at the bottom), and only have promotion and relegation of the top 2 or 3 (or 4 or 5) from each division every few weeks (his suggestion was every seven weeks). In past years promotion and relegation have been freely done every week, which means that the divisions serve no real purpose (other than bragging rights). Something else to think about.
https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=15250 There's the link for the 2002 final standings. The prior years were lost in last year's big crash. Past Champions: 2000: soccertom 2001: jlo 2002: IASocFan 2002 Cup Winner: dred (3 weekly cups)
I hate long messages so I'm breaking my comments into several short messages... I really like that idea for the divisions. Here are some further suggestions on how it might work: > Initial seeding is based on last years results. All new teams are added to the bottom division(s) in the order they post their first prediction. > Break up the the 30 weeks of the season into 5 6-week promotion/relegation periods. > At end of each 6-week period the bottom 5 teams in each division--based on season to date poitn totals--swap places with the top 5 in the next lower division. [I picked 5 to make it easier for new participants this year to reach the top division.] How does that sound?
I put together a small database of regular season games from the last 3 years (the years without the dreaded shoot-out). Here's the breakdown for goal differential for 491 games: 17.3% GD = 0 (a tie) 45.5% GD = 1 21.5% GD = 2 15.7% GD = 3+ (a blowout) Home field advantage is worth .48 goals a game. That translates into: 17.3% games end in tie 28.7% are won by visitors and 54.2% are won by the home team. The most common scores are: H 2 : 1 V - 14.5% {home win} H 1 : 1 V - 8.1% {tie} H 2 : 0 V - 7.5% {home win} H 1 : 2 V - 7.3% {visitor win}
Okay, here's my scoring suggestion... Exact score (A) 2 points for picking the exact score Correct result (B) 1 point for correct pick of home team win 2 points for correct pick of visitor win 3 points for correct pick of a tie BONUS POINTS for Goal Differential (C) 1 bonus point for correctly picking 2+ goal differential winner Total points = (A) + (B) + (C) Pros: rewards picking ties and other scores other than one goal games and is still relatively simple to understand. Cons: increases effort required to calculate results. I leave it up to Guinho if he would even consider something like this!
Finally, here are example results: 0 points = WRONG WINNER 1 point = WRONG SCORE and HOME WIN w/ 1 (or wrong) GD 2 points = WRONG SCORE and VISITOR WINS w/ 1 (or wrong) GD 3 points = WRONG SCORE and TIE 3 points = WRONG SCORE and VISITOR WINS w/ 2+ GD 3 points = EXACT SCORE and HOME WIN w/ 1 GD 4 points = EXACT SCORE and HOME WIN w/ 2+ GD 4 points = EXACT SCORE and VISITOR WINS w/ 1 GD 5 points = EXACT SCORE and TIE 5 points = EXACT SCORE and VISITOR WINS w/ 2+ GD That does look about right for an "order of difficulty," doesn't it?