June 05, 2015

Enter the Women's World Cup Confidence Pool: The Women's World Cup begins Saturday at 6 p.m. Eastern as Canada hosts China. We're running a confidence pool for the tournament, a contest in which you give all 24 teams a point value from 24 to 1 and receive points each time they win or tie in the tournament. The first prize is an Adidas Performance Conext15 Glider soccer ball.

posted by rcade to soccer at 02:40 PM - 14 comments

I had to do some debugging to make this pool work for the new World Cup. I think it's saving entries properly, but if you have trouble let me know.

posted by rcade at 02:52 PM on June 05, 2015

Worked for me, thanks rcade.


Bribery scandal follows FIFA to Women's World Cup.


Toronto media trolls the rest of the country.


Also, there is the small matter of Edmonton. This requires some delicacy.

Edmonton, God love you. In some ways you are the romantic home of soccer in Canada. But when the whole country has to stand up in front of the rest of the world, you can't be the first one talking. We just need you to stand there quietly, looking supportive.

No, no, not in front. They'll see you. Stand behind Vancouver. No, on the other side of Montreal. All right, why don't you just crouch down behind Halifax and we'll hope everyone thinks you're Ottawa.

Of course the author goes on to equate Liverpool with Sunderland which shows he's not really that into soccer.

posted by rumple at 03:52 PM on June 05, 2015

In, go USAians!

posted by billsaysthis at 04:37 PM on June 05, 2015

Done.

As for the Toronto trolling, that's just because they're not hosting a match.
They wasted their money on the Pan Am Games.

As a Canadian, and someone who lived in Toronto for 20+ years (and lives only 2 hours away), I had no idea the Pan Am Games were still a thing until they announced they were hosting them. I would MUCH rather have had the Women's World Cup than this baby-Olympics thing.

Edit: I can't seem to read the article. The link (and even clicking on the title on the webpage itself) produces a "can't load, too many looping references" error in Chrome.

posted by grum@work at 08:18 PM on June 05, 2015

The link on this post should take you to your entry.

posted by rcade at 08:43 PM on June 05, 2015

In. Group of death. Again.

posted by owlhouse at 09:28 PM on June 05, 2015

Toronto media trolls the rest of the country

I'd have to imagine the author has never left Toronto in his entire life and has no perspective on the rest of the country. Sucks to be him.

Possibly Toronto sportswriters just need to find something, anything, to write about with all the downtime they have covering their local teams when writers in other cities are covering the playoffs.

I'll admit Edmonton isn't my favorite Canadian city. But on my trips to Edmonton I haven't ever had to think about scheduling my golf or tennis around the smog index as I do in the "big smoke".

Good God - the Pan Am games are in Toronto? I certainly hope not during the summer/smog months. Made the mistake of playing through an alert there in a tournament and had trouble breathing for weeks afterwards. Can't imagine what it would be like to play a match or 2 of soccer in that environment.

posted by cixelsyd at 09:30 PM on June 05, 2015

But on my trips to Edmonton I haven't ever had to think about scheduling my golf or tennis around the smog index as I do in the "big smoke".

There was a total of one "smog alert" (for two days) for all of 2013 and 2014.

posted by grum@work at 09:49 PM on June 05, 2015

There was a total of one "smog alert" (for two days) for all of 2013 and 2014

Must be improving ... or the criteria has changed.

I'm an old timer, and I'm referring to to the mid 2000's where 20 - 50+ days of alerts were the norm.

Hell, just watching a sport in those conditions today would do me major harm.

posted by cixelsyd at 09:57 PM on June 05, 2015

Entries have been saved for rcade, tron7, rumple, bender, billsaysthis, grum@work, owlhouse, cixelsyd, goddam and ursus_comiter.

Billsaysthis has Thailand, Ecuador, Cameroon, Costa Rica as his top four, so I'm assuming he saved them in reverse order. I'll fix that in the database.

posted by rcade at 08:35 AM on June 06, 2015

The standings are current through Saturday's games. Bill's entry has been flipped over.

posted by rcade at 10:03 AM on June 07, 2015

@rcade I took that meaning from your text on the page, thanks for fixing it.

posted by billsaysthis at 12:37 PM on June 07, 2015

No problem.

Here's the text, if you'd like to take a pass at making it easier to grok:

Assign each of the 24 World Cup teams a point value, from 24 down to 1, based on how confident you are in that team winning games. Receive your point value multiplied by 3 when that team wins and your point value when it ties. So if {$random_team} is in your 20-point position, you get 60 points for each {$random_team} victory, 20 points for each {$random_team} tie and 0 points for each {$random_team} defeat.
I'd like a drag-and-drop interface for the entry form, but didn't have the time to add one. Who could have known the World Cup would start June 6?

posted by rcade at 12:59 PM on June 07, 2015

As in the past, I'm happy to lend my JS skills to the project. Which, to be clear, is what I do at my day job.

posted by billsaysthis at 10:43 AM on June 09, 2015

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