THANKS FOR PLAYING---SUGGESTIONS

[teddy sherr]

Hey Everybody,

First of all I want to thank everyone who played in the contest as I enjoyed putting it on. For those of you who did not make the playoffs you get to spend the off season stocking up 4 of your stables to enter in next years simcup08 contest. I will be posting up the entry thread and contest board in November with the simcup08 contest starting the first weekend in 2008.

For those who have made the playoffs--good luck in the road to the SIMCUP07 CHAMPIONSHIP.

I have opened this thread for players to give their suggestions and opinions on any rule changes that i should consider for next years contest.

One change I have already decided upon is that on 14 horse field will be counted in the contest. If you enter in a 20 horse field race then the bottom 6 horses in the race would be eliminated for the purpose of scoring.

Another suggestion I am thinking about is making the points scored as the first tie breaker and the +/- as the second tie breaker in the event a tiebreaker is needed for a playoff spot. The points scored is really the only score a player has control over and i will think about that change.

If anyone thinks of anything else please feel free to post it here or email me at [e-mail].


Cheers

Theo

[wenlock]

admin said:

One change I have already decided upon is that on 14 horse field will be counted in the contest. If you enter in a 20 horse field race then the bottom 6 horses in the race would be eliminated for the purpose of scoring.

Another suggestion I am thinking about is making the points scored as the first tie breaker and the +/- as the second tie breaker in the event a tiebreaker is needed for a playoff spot. The points scored is really the only score a player has control over and i will think about that change.

A good change and I agree 100% that we can only control our points scored so it makes a lot of sense to me to try and use that too. The number of fixtures against inactives also comes down to luck and their results can have an impact.

I know inactives were mentioned earlier in the season by Meremortals in another thread, you and Meremortals both offered a solution which I will recap below I will then offer a solution too.


Meremortals
I propose in future competitions that if a player does not submit an entry, his opponent plays against an average of the totals of all players that did. It's not perfect but at least is better than the current. I played against one of these folks last week scoring 39 points picking up the win and +39 on the tiebreaker. Other players in my division did not have this luxury while the departed player was active.

Theo
One of my ideas was to create a pool from 4 stables of mine and tomake that the common entry and teams will have to play that team whenever a non entry comes in for their score. The team that does not enter would automatically receive a loss and negative =/- points. The problem is what happens as is the case with one player this week who is away on holiday's on a cruise and is not entering any horses this week.

Me
People on the whole don't tend to drop out until after a few weeks of a long contest like this so work out the average points scored for each player so far and freeze that statistic after something like 6 weeks into the contest. When someone doesn't enter their horses they recieve a loss regardless for that week but their average score statistic is used for their points scored in the tie.

EDIT....
Or you could even do away with the points against seeing it is out of everyones control and do the following instead...

- Everyone has their points scored so far total and that is the first tiebreaker used.

-Have an average points stat that freezes at the end of week 6 or thereabouts like I already stated and use that as a second tiebreak if needed.

-Any week when someone doesn't enter any horses they take a loss on that fixture and their average score statistic is used for their weekly points scored which is then added to their running points scored total for the contest

[pogo]

Firstly i would like to thank Teddy for putting on the contest.

Of all the contests i enter each week this (and our res version of this,the EAAA Cup,which Teddy also runs)is my favorite.Its the head to head aspect of it I enjoy i think.

the only thing in the way of a suggestion i have is to agree with Wenlock about teams that dont enter.(I must say though even if things are going badly for me and i have no chance to qualify i feel it is only polite to keep entering each week so not to spoil the competition.Maybe teams who stopped entering this year because they were doing badly should be banned,or suspended for a couple of competitions at least).If we can just find a way to stop the quitters from having an affect on the contest then we have a superb format for many more great contests.

[meremortals]

Thanks for putting this thing on, Teddy, it has been my favorite thing in the sim since the league's inception. I'll be watching the playoffs though as I had the best record of all teams that didn't make it ( groan ). It can only get bigger and better in future years.

Points scored as the first tiebreaker gets my vote as well for the reasons that you and Wenlock state. I agree with capping scoring at 14 entries too.

Wenlock, thanks for posting my idea from the other thread, saves me some typing. I don't like Theo's idea on it because the total could be so varied. As for your's I can name at least two teams that dropped out before week six and one I believe after the first week. With research I could probably come up with more. Also if using an average of a dropout team's first six weeks that total could be pretty low as the probable reason is poor performance. I still like my idea the best until someone posts something better. Mine will produce a good mid-number. Have a good week and you'll beat it. A poor one and you'll lose.

Good luck to all who made the playoffs.

[wenlock]

meremortals said:

Wenlock, thanks for posting my idea from the other thread, saves me some typing. I don't like Theo's idea on it because the total could be so varied. As for your's I can name at least two teams that dropped out before week six and one I believe after the first week. With research I could probably come up with more. Also if using an average of a dropout team's first six weeks that total could be pretty low as the probable reason is poor performance. I still like my idea the best until someone posts something better. Mine will produce a good mid-number. Have a good week and you'll beat it. A poor one and you'll lose.

Good luck to all who made the playoffs.

Some of the points you have raised are true but may not have much of an affect, even less so depending on if we keep the goal difference as a statistic and tiebreaker or not. Maybe something better will come along like you said but I will try to explain my suggestions a little better just incase.

If we keep goal difference then the aim is to reduce as much as possible how the scores of people dropping out affect other players and to me it would be better if possible to have a fixed score that everyone faces in their fixture instead of a varied score which yours and Theo's suggestions would give. If someone loses the fixture by default if they fail to enter horses for the week then all we are looking at is how their points scored affect goal difference for those facing them. If they dropped out very early then everyone will have low scores against them when facing those individuals while if they stayed right until week 6 and got their avertage frozen for the remainder of the contest everyone would face the same possibly high scores aginst them that hits their goal difference. Like I said both yours and Theo's suggestions could vary from week to week, granted yours should be more stable but I saw a few weeks just at the end there for a start where it seemed that many people didn't enter at all.

If we do away with the goal difference and anyone failing to enter horses loses the fixture by default then it wouldn't matter about any points scored against us at all really apart from those first 6 weeks because they are the only fixtures that could be lost outright. If we also take into account that people quitting is usually a result of them losing then they should not affect things much at all because they shouldn't have beaten many people. Then this comes down to the frozen average purely being used in the case of a second tiebreak and seeing that we would all know this in advance our fates to push this average up as much as possible would all be in our own hands.

[foxon]

Hi Theo,

Firstly, thanks for putting all this together - it's been great fun.

The one change I would like to see only came to my attention this week. I love the set-up - top of each group going through and second and third into a 3 week playoff. However, I think it would be an improvement if the 2nd vs 3rd teams came from different groups, like in the (footy) World Cup. For example:

2nd Grp A v 3rd Grp B
2nd Grp B v 3rd Grp A
2nd Grp C v 3rd Grp D etc.

As it is, each team will have already played their opponents twice in the regular season and it would be nice to be able to compete against different teams.

Just a thought.

[scootboy]

I agree with foxon, it would definitely be nice to play against different people, not to mention that under the current format it is impossible for 2 teams from the same division to make it past the 2nd round of the playoffs.

scoot