Prediction League

As I mentioned in the other thread last week, I will launch a new competition starting from this weekend, the round numbers will align with the match numbers from the league so the first week will be labelled as Round 5 and so on. The competition rules and explanation is as follows, it will work a bit like Last Man Standing:

1. All participating players choose a team from the current week's fixtures.
2. If your chosen team win, you will accumulate points based on how many consecutive correct outcomes you get.
3. If your chosen team draw or lose, you will get 0 points and your accumulator resets.
4. If a match involving your team is abandoned or postponed, your accumulator will remain in tact however you cannot choose a match that is highly unlikely to take place due to FA Cup/weather or Covid likely to postpone it unless it's been pushed to the midweek immediately following a weekend.
5. During the remainder of the competition you must choose each team at least once but you cannot use a team twice until 16 rounds have passed since you last used them. There are 42 rounds left but it's likely that there will be fewer rounds than that played, if you choose a club in round 5 you can't use them again before round 21.
6. To enter the competition simply make a selection in any week, I'll do this in a separate thread, if you miss round 5 it doesn't matter you can start round 6 on 0 points.
7. If you are running late, you can enter provided there is at least one remaining fixture not yet started in the round involving a team that you have not chosen. (i.e. if this weekend you don't enter until 1pm on Saturday, you can't choose our match or the 12:30 kick offs but you can choose any of the 3pm kickoffs).
8. If you forget to enter a round your accumulator automatically resets to zero.
9. The winner will be the person with the most points and have at some point chosen all 24 teams.
10. I'll include midweek fixtures when there's a round of them.
11. Everyone will get two "draw insurance" chances, you can use them in any week but it would be wise to use them when you are well in to an accumulator, it means that if your chosen team draw their match you accumulator stays in tact.
12. Those who got past round 2 of the first Last Man Standing will get some bonus points in recognition of their achievements, team selections for the remaining players in that competition is independent of this new competition.
13. A weekend round of fixtures starting from a Friday or a Saturday will be posted by the Wednesday, a midweek round will be posted by the Sunday. This will limit overlapping of rounds but that may not always be possible later in the season.

The points accumulator will work like this:

If your team wins you will accumulate the square of the number of consecutive rounds correct, when you choose a team that doesn't win your accumulator returns to zero but you keep the points earned, they get added to your season total.

Example:

Round 5: Team A chosen, win = 1 point.
Round 6: Team B chosen, win = accumulator is now 4 points.
Round 7: Team C chosen, win = accumulator is now 9 points.
Round 8: Team D chosen, lose, you keep your 9 points, but your accumulator resets.
Round 9: Team E chosen, win = accumulator is now 1 point, but season total is 10 points.
Round 10: Team F chosen, win = accumulator is now 4 points, but season total is 13 points.
Round 11: Team G chosen, lose, you keep your accumulated 4 points plus the first set of 9 points, but your accumulator resets.

The draw insurance, you must specify when you want to use them when you have any available.

Round 5: Team A chosen, win = 1 point.
Round 6: Team B chosen, win = accumulator is now 4 points.
Round 7: Team C chosen, win = accumulator is now 9 points.
Round 8: Team D chosen, win = accumulator is now 16 points.
Round 9: Team E chosen but you specify the draw insurance, draw = accumulator remains at 16 points.
Round 10: Team F chosen, win = accumulator is now 25 points.

If your draw insurance team wins your accumulator will go up anyway, if they lose your accumulator resets.


If you have any questions or requests then let me know ASAP as I will create a thread this afternoon for Round 5.

 

This is the state of play as we go in to the international break:



Had @Knight GT and @Teide1 used a draw insurance today they would have protected their accumulators.

Thanks for everyone taking part. As for duplicates please try you best to not select a team you've had before, twice this has slipped under my radar. In both cases their choices lost anyway, but going forward if you choose a team you have chosen within the previous 16 rounds your choice will automatically lose.

The current top 3 are:

Carpster (40)
KnightGT (36)
Teide1 (27)

 

Have those of us who chose derby only had 15 choices so need to pick one of the remaining 9 rather than being able to choose anyone?

 

According to the week 21 thread it counted as a non choice so you can only pick one of the 9 you have not currently picked.

 

@Otter - quick question.

Once we've chosen 16 teams which most of us have now, can you effectively choose the same team every week (including the fact that at some point you need to use the other 8 teams at least once at some point)?

So for example with approximately 24 games to go I could choose Norwich for 16 of those games if I wanted to with the other 8 being the final 8 teams of the 24.

Not that I'd want Norwich every week. But basically as long as at some point I use the other 8 teams, the other 16 or so can be teams used multiple times?

 

No, once you have chosen 16 teams you can choose any of the teams you haven't used yet plus any team you chose 16 or more rounds ago. To make things easier in the last few days I have been making another list that tells players who they can choose from and listing the teams not yet used by those players, remember all teams must be used by round 46.



The teams in red are chosen for the current round, I will update after each round.

 

Ah I get it. There has to be at least 16 rounds between using the same team twice.

 

After the current round, I'm going to make minor changes to mitigate against postponements:

1) If there are fewer than 6 matches surviving in a round due to postponements, the entire round will be scrapped so all choices will be voided.
2) In case of a late postponement, when choosing your team you can choose another in brackets which is your backup. This will not apply if the primary choice is abandoned having started their match.
3) If you apply the above you can set neither, one or both for draw insurance.
4) You don't have to choose a backup
5) If your primary choice does play it does not stop you from using the backup the following week.
6) Rearranged fixtures (such as Bournemouth v Millwall match on 12/1/21) are excluded from this competition.

Update 2:
Example: Barnsley (Birmingham if postponed)

Update 3:
Example 1: Barnsley + draw insurance (Birmingham)
Example 2: Barnsley (Birmingham + draw insurance)
Example 3: Barnsley + draw insurance (Birmingham + draw insurance)

In example 1, if the Barnsley match is postponed you don't lose a draw insurance.
In example 2, if Barnsley do play then the draw insurance for the backup is not applied and you don't lose it.
In example 3, you will only be using one draw insurance.

 

Looking ahead to the Easter weekend there are two rounds of matches in a short space, I will create two open threads for choices for those who anticipate not being around between the single Saturday game and Easter Monday. Obviously team choices in the Easter Monday round can't include the team chosen in the Good Friday round and there will be an additional team available for Easter Monday that is not available on Good Friday.

If you know that you are going to be available to make a pick in the 48 hours or so between the two rounds then don't worry about putting in an early selection for the Easter Monday round.

 

With 8 rounds remaining at the international break, here is the current table:

 

The final standings:

 

A massive well done to the champion @miked2006 , the second half of today's games flipped the top two around.



He will win a custom tag but he already has one!

 

Thanks to everyone taking part, the large field of players has made it all worthwhile.

 

Congratulations to the winner and thanks @Otter for a stella job well done.

 

Thanks Otter for your time running this competition, much appreciated!

 

My plan was to say I was going for Preston but switch to Coventry just before kick off. Both WatfordEire and I had Coventry available, and I didn’t want them to copy me and instantly win the competition.

Then I got dragged to the pub and forgot. It didn’t matter in the end as both teams won, but I’m glad I didn’t check the scores at half time or I’d have been anxiously checking my phone throughout the second half.

Huge thanks again @Otter, it’s been really fun.

 

It wasn't too much hassle to run, the most difficult round was the of the weekend of the 4th round of the FA Cup.

I don't mind doing the same again next season, however the question is whether we do the Championship as it's more unpredictable or the Premier League because we'll be in it. I don't mind either way.

Any comments and/or suggestions would be welcome. I noticed that some players never used any of their draw insurances, etc.

 

Well done Otter thanks mate, looking forward to next season already.

Any chance you could think up something for The Euros this Summer?

 

I will add the play-offs bonus for you to add on you your tally if you wish but it won't take away the fact that Mike won this particular competition. I probably won't do anything for the Euros.

 

Congrats @miked2006 ! A last minute goal conceded by Reading swings it, very fitting for the Championship!

Understand your concern re: me picking the same team, but honestly I would never have done that, ruins the fun and sure it's only a bitta craic at the end of the day!

Well deserved after missing the first few weeks too! And as mentioned, fair play to @Otter for running it!

 

cheers Otter for running, and a thumbs up for miked2006 for winning.

 

Who are you Foxy and Skyla? Thanks for running it Otter

 

Crikey, could even get that right. Sorry Foxy

 

That's the end of that!

Thanks for all of you who took part, the numbers made it good to run, it would have been less motivating to do had there only been 5 or 6 players, but 20 players finished the season, some only did one or two weeks and a couple of players dropped out by Christmas. It was good to see those who were way behind continue to play, particularly @SkylaRose who had a great knack of jinxing everyone she chose.

I don't mind doing it again next season, so I have a number of questions:

Should I do the EPL as we're in it, or stick with the Championship for it's unpredictability?
Not everyone used the draw insurance, should I keep them or should I do something else, such as in the EPL if a team draw away from home it behaves like a draw insurance did?

Any other suggestions would be welcome. However at this stage it is difficult to know whether the EPL fixtures will be staggered over multiple days like they were this season, if so it would be very difficult to separate the weeks out nicely. The only complication I had in the Championship with season was the FA Cup 4th round date.

 

I'd prefer the EPL, as I doubt I'll watch any EFL football following promotion. Not that I watched much (other than Watford) this year!

Draw insurance worked well and using it strategically won me the league, so I'd selfishly prefer it stayed.

If it's easy to construct, you could potentially have a double points chip, where one game in the league that year acts as two matches (so if you win, you get two victories rather than one). A bit like FPL triple captain.

Not sure about the gameweeks. I imagine you could just use the FPL gameweeks, which would mean you could just copy and paste.

 

Thanks for your hard work Otter. Took a little while for me to get my head around the competition (my fault, not yours) but it grew on me as it went along.

I think you should do the PL next season. The Champ is probably less predictable but then there was a few weeks at the start of this season where "whoever's playing Wycombe" worked wonders for some. I suppose the same would have happened with Sheff Utd in the PL.

And like mike I probably won't watch many EFL games next season so if you go for that I'd be picking pretty blind.

I'd vote to keep draw insurance in its current format.

And I think you could allow a wildcard pick once a season if someone doesn't want to choose from their allowed options. Could still say they can't pick the same team twice but it would give them the full range of 19 to choose from that week.

 

Same for me EPL. Top job @Otter for a stellar job. I like your option for the away team as the draw insurance would make you look deeper I to away games and make for an exciting challenge. I did like the double or triple point option on one game in the season, would vastly help someone who has dropped off the points..

 

I'll come up with something in the next couple of months, I won't be doing a Euro 2020 game.

I felt the squaring of the consecutive wins worked well to give fair reward. In the Championship I allowed up to 9 choices, in the Prem I'll allow 7.

I will be on holiday between 21st and 28th August, so I will have to consider that too.

 

I'm sure if you cancel now you can get a partial refund.

 

Not bothered about the draw insurance. Game is about picking winners not miserable draw merchants. I would vote for a points bonus for picking away winners though. Maybe three points for home winner, four points for an away winner or something similar. Just a thought

 

EPL for me and the same format for everything, draw insurance etc. Well done mate keep it up