Rules

Registration

There is no cost to enter the Pool, there are no prizes other than bragging rights and registration is open to anyone who happens across the site. It’s a separate application from the Forum and it does require a separate registration. We recommend that Forum members use the same screen name they use on the Forum or whatever glory they earn in the Pool will be meaningless.

Predicting the matches

Predict the winners of each week’s games. Or predict the final scores. Both count the same and correct matches on final scores will only be used if we need a tiebreaker. You have until 15 minutes before the start of each game to add or change your predictions. The Pool is on Pacific Time. Once a game has started, not even an Administrator can add or change predictions, so we recommend getting them in well before the cut-off time.

Each week’s games will be added sometime during that week. No promises as to when. We do this in our “spare” time but we’ll make every effort to give everybody sufficient time to make their predictions.

The golden ball

Everybody will have one “Golden Ball” to use sometime during the season. Guessing the winner correctly will score 10 points on that game. Guessing incorrectly will still score zero. Points won’t be deducted. Clicking on the grey ball activates it; clicking on another one moves it. It can be activated or moved any time until the specific game’s cutoff time. Once activated, it can’t be de-activated. Yeah, I know it’s a soccer ball. What can I say? The software was written for soccer tournaments.

The scoring

All games will count the same, whether they’re preaseason, regular season or playoffs. The software doesn’t allow us to assign different values to the different types of games.

One point is scored for predicting the winner of each game, whether you guess the correct score or not. A prediction of 1-0 will score the same as one of 27-14. However, the number of correct scores will be used in the event we need a tiebreaker. If we’re still tied after that, we’ll declare a draw and multiple people will share the glory.

We’ll be continuing the Game of the Week and Pillow Fight of the week from previous pools. In Perspixx’s words, “The former is intended to be the most interesting game that week, usually involving teams with undefeated or nearly-undefeated records, and intense rivalry or league title on the line. The latter is the most interesting game of that week involving bad teams, even better if both are winless.” They’ll score no differently, either.

Rankings will be shown on the Rankings page and individuals’ scoring can be seen on the Statistics page. Click on the gear on the statistics page to select any or all players. The Win/Lose chart on that page is called “Toto Score”. No idea why but changing it could screw up something else, so we’ll go with Toto Score. Get used to it.