July 12, 2016

Congratulations to Bender, the only player who predicted a Portugal victory. That pick had to be looking grim when Ronaldo went out early.

Points were hard to come by in the final. Pepe robbed many of yellow card glory.

Did people like the smaller point increases in the Euro, the larger ones in the Copa, or no point increases at all for picking winners from round to round?

posted by rcade at 04:31 PM on July 12, 2016

Thanks rcade. Good fun, and congrats to bender.

My fortunes peaked in the early knockout rounds, then collapsed. So I must be either Iceland or Wales.

posted by owlhouse at 07:32 PM on July 12, 2016

Thanks! And thanks, rcade, for more complicated calculations than the average pick 'em! Yes, I was sure that Portugal was done when Ronaldo went out, but apparently the whole theme of the tournament was that Portugal managed to do just enough to advance every single time. I even found myself feeling bad for Ronaldo when he came off, which is a far cry from when I laughed at him when he missed the penalty kick against Austria. Mostly, I'm thrilled that someone scored so we didn't have another penalty shootout!

I like grum's 75/20/5 breakdown for winners/scores/props, which is pretty close to where we were. I think that he's in the right area of weight for each of those categories, and I think he's also on to something with increasing the group play points, as there are so many more picks there. I liked, though, the milder escalation of points from round to next round that we had in this game, versus, for instance the one he laid out where points/game doubles each round until it quadruples to the final. A quick calculation on the scores per round from our game (excluding props):

----------Group----R16----Qtr----Semi----Final----Total
Winners--25%---17%---14%---11%-----8%-----75%
Score-------0%----8%-----7%----6%------4%-----25%

Of course the final is the most important game, and I understand that the following statement is a bit over-simplified (because I'm not going back to calculate everyone's different scores), but if our scoring system had the final round being worth double the semifinal round, it would have been worth 320 instead of 120. If all of the other scores were the same, that is enough points to potentially move any person on the scoreboard (except the last two, who only picked the group stage) to the top. That is a lot riding on one pick, which is a 50/50 proposition.

All of that is to say that I like the way the points broke down (and not just because I won!), except like grum suggests, I would increase the group play points, since those represent so many more games. If we doubled the group play points, for instance, to 40 (for 1st or 2nd place), 30 (for 3rd place advancers), and 20 (add for group winners), you end up with 40% for the group stage and 20%/17%/13%/10% per round combined between picks and scores, with 80% for picks and 20% for scores. I think that prop bets were probably at a good level.

posted by bender at 09:58 PM on July 12, 2016

Bender Like Pick' Em

Only if it can be the lead-in to the Jamie Vardy biopic, Leicester? I hardly knew her!

Also, I just noticed that I was in last place after group play, and yerfatma was in the lead, and well.. Presumably that means that increasing those scores as I noted would not result in me winning.

posted by bender at 11:05 PM on July 12, 2016

Weird. I must have put somebody else's 25 in your column. I blame fell supernatural influence.

posted by rcade at 11:55 AM on July 13, 2016

I was in last place after group play, and yerfatma was in the lead, and well

Yeah, I think the outlier was that I ever did well. Killed myself in the semis by second-guessing myself.

posted by yerfatma at 12:54 PM on July 13, 2016