WRC Fan - A Free Prediction Platform By WRC fans

[krisgerhard]

Hi WRC Fans!

I'd like to introduce you a free WRC results predicting site that is developed by couple of WRC fans from Estonia.

I qualify myself quite a big fan - I've attended WRC events in 7 different countries and followed WRC for the most of my life.
Before the events we always made predictions among my friends, but we didn't find any good website to help us do it.
So as a software developer myself, I decided to do create a platform just for our needs.

You can

predict event TOP5 and powerstage TOP3 for for which you get points if you're correct.
create your own leagues with friends to compare your predictions and results easily!

I'd like you, Motorsport Forums' users, to be our first users outside of Estonia.
I already made a custom league for this community and to join all you have to do is follow this link:
https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

Don't worry if you are starting later in the season. You can create leagues starting from any event of the calendar!

So go ahead. Open the link above or this one HERE (https://wrcfan.com/). Log in and explore the plaftorm!

We're really looking forward to your feedback on how to improve it!

How are points awarded?

Full points for correctly predicting driver's position. Attribution of points is the same as in WRC.
* 25 points for 1st place
* 18 points for 2nd place
* 15 points for 3rd place
* 12 points for 4th place
* 10 points for 5th place

Half the points when your prediction is off by one position.
* E.g. if you predict participant to finish 2nd but the correct position is 3rd then you are awarded 15 / 2 = 7.5 points

5 points when your prediction is off by more than one position but the participant finishes in TOP 5.

* 5 points for guessing correctly Power Stage 1st place
* 3 points for guessing correctly Power Stage 2nd place
* 2 points for guessing correctly Power Stage 3rd place
Half the points if your prediction is off by one position. The actual position is used for the points calculation.
* 1 point for guessing correctly driver in Power Stage TOP 3

Kris-Gerhard,
WRC Fan

[Kradovech]

Hi

There is an already ongoing predictions competition going on including results from Monte Carlo, so it would not be fair to the winners of MC to move to a new platform right now. I have agreed to manage it (with help) with a half automated excel spreadsheet for this year and I will keep this promise.
That being said, I personally believe a "third party" system, such as this one or the one by Kefdude, is the way to go in the future - possibly starting from next year. A fully automated system would reduce the time needed for managing it to practically zero and therefor there would not be a need to find a new guy to manage it on here every year. But to do that, a more or less finished and working solution would be needed a few weeks before next years first round. Since you have a whole year to develop your system, I think this will not be a problem :)

I joined the motorsportforums league on your site to give some feedback. If enough people join, we can consider it a parallel competition, same as with Kefdudes

Initial feedback from me:

Qustom leagues is a very good idea, this is exactly what I though was missing in Kefdude's solution. I think this is one of the reasons why it did not get that popular here - people want to compete with people they know. I might use it to create a smaller league for my friends and/or collegues later in the year. Maybe consider adding a way to password protect the leagues so random people cannot join your family's competition?

I assume you have to have a unique user name. Add an ability to change your display name for each league. This is because if for example people from this forum join, they will want to use the same name as here but it might be already taken. Similarly I would prefer to use my first name in my "family league", however it will probably be in use.

Number of predictions. Currently you have a prediction of top 5. For bigger groups that is not enough, there will be too many ties IMO. In MC we had over 70 people posting and there were quite a lot of equal scores. We predicted the top 8. Considering the numbers have been even 120 people my guess is with your system the top 10 might end up with equal scores (If the rally result is not a complete surprise). On the other hand if you have a group of 10-20 people, top 5 will be completely enough. So maybe it would be a good idea to have the ability to create custom rules for each league and the creator of the league can select if it is top 5, top 8 or anything else.

A popular rule from this forum - the lowest score in a round will be dropped for each player. This way everyone is allowed to miss a rally or just have an off weekend. Maybe this could also be one of the qustom rules.

Thats one guy's opinion anyway :) I wish you good luck!

[krisgerhard]

Hi

There is an already ongoing predictions competition going on including results from Monte Carlo, so it would not be fair to the winners of MC to move to a new platform right now. I have agreed to manage it (with help) with a half automated excel spreadsheet for this year and I will keep this promise.
That being said, I personally believe a "third party" system, such as this one or the one by Kefdude, is the way to go in the future - possibly starting from next year. A fully automated system would reduce the time needed for managing it to practically zero and therefor there would not be a need to find a new guy to manage it on here every year. But to do that, a more or less finished and working solution would be needed a few weeks before next years first round. Since you have a whole year to develop your system, I think this will not be a problem :)

I joined the motorsportforums league on your site to give some feedback. If enough people join, we can consider it a parallel competition, same as with Kefdudes

Initial feedback from me:

Qustom leagues is a very good idea, this is exactly what I though was missing in Kefdude's solution. I think this is one of the reasons why it did not get that popular here - people want to compete with people they know. I might use it to create a smaller league for my friends and/or collegues later in the year. Maybe consider adding a way to password protect the leagues so random people cannot join your family's competition?

I assume you have to have a unique user name. Add an ability to change your display name for each league. This is because if for example people from this forum join, they will want to use the same name as here but it might be already taken. Similarly I would prefer to use my first name in my "family league", however it will probably be in use.

Number of predictions. Currently you have a prediction of top 5. For bigger groups that is not enough, there will be too many ties IMO. In MC we had over 70 people posting and there were quite a lot of equal scores. We predicted the top 8. Considering the numbers have been even 120 people my guess is with your system the top 10 might end up with equal scores (If the rally result is not a complete surprise). On the other hand if you have a group of 10-20 people, top 5 will be completely enough. So maybe it would be a good idea to have the ability to create custom rules for each league and the creator of the league can select if it is top 5, top 8 or anything else.

A popular rule from this forum - the lowest score in a round will be dropped for each player. This way everyone is allowed to miss a rally or just have an off weekend. Maybe this could also be one of the qustom rules.

Thats one guy's opinion anyway :) I wish you good luck!

Hi. Really nice to read that you think our initiative is in the right direction. Thank you.
We can talk about the details privately but actually migrating existing predictions to WRC Fan is not that hard. I we could pull it off.

Thank you for the detailed feedback, I add some explanation why things are like they are at the moment.

Custom leagues
...will get administrative tools such as editing league details, member management (inviting/removing) etc.
At the moment league link should be kept private if you don't want random people to join.
We worked really hard to get something usable ready for Rally Sweden and that I think we accomplished.
Also there are a lot of improvements planned regarding the league table itself.

Public display name
... does not have to be unique. That's something different from username. This is a quick solution that works for now but might be adjusted in the future.

Predicting TOP5 and fear of ties.
I think we will see the problem as the year goes on, it's hard to draw conclusions about the point scoring system after one event. I'm quite certain the point scoring system is not perfect but that's the best we came up with at the moment. As we've stated inside the platform as well - we might change it midseason if it proves to be unbalanced or too forgiving.
About the number of predictions I think it's difficult to go over 5 because a) we only want to focus on WRC drivers (not WRC2) b) we believe positions after top 5 are too random and do not really show your knowledge/ability to predict.
In conclusion we think that If there is going to be too many ties then the point scoring system should be adjusted not the number of predictions made.

The "the lowest score in a round will be dropped for each player" rule is really interesting! We'll add it to our backlog!

[Kradovech]

Moving the pickems right now does not seem like a good idea. Automatically it would mean changing the rules I dont like doing it in the middle of the competition. It would not be fair to the guys who did well at Monte.

But if you get enough of guys here to join we could have a parrallel competition and help you test in the process. Conversion of Monte and, I guess, Sweden could be in order.

As for the predicting top 5 being sorted by the scoring system - that will be difficult to do with guys who have the exact same prediction for top 5. Predicting positions 6-10 might have a bit more luck involved but that will be balanced with lower score awards. To win you will need an accurate top5, predictions beyond that are there for ranking the guys who get the same score from top 5. Only other way of I thought of for ranking the guys is giving the better position to the guy who made the prediction earlier. The logic here being than predicting earlier is more difficult due to more uncertain weather conditions and not having observed the shakedown. i never suggested it here because I though it's a bit lame way ranking and most of all - it would have made my life more difficult.
Anyway, I suggest you try out and balance the scoring system based on past results in different pickems, for example the ones in these forums.

[krisgerhard]

I have to agree with your view about moving the pickems. It will certainly make the leaders unhappy.

What I propose is that if some of you would like to try out the new platform but not lose your progress - write me a private message and I'll import your past predictions from THIS forum to WRC Fan

About predicting beyond TOP5 I still disagree. I looked it up and out of 13 rounds last year, in 7 of them at least one WRC2 driver was inside TOP 8.
I want it to be only about WRC so that's why WRC Fan draws the line with top 5 for the moment. We already have some ideas about implementing additional predictions about the event to "separate wheat from the chaff".

In my opinion comparing the time of predictions should really be the last thing to do and also predicting is locked with the start of shakedown in WRC Fan.

There probably is no silver bullet in point scoring systems and only time (and simulations ;)) can tell how well we do.

To sum up the post:
* We do not plan to add predicting beyond top5
* Additional predictions (details kept secret for now) are to be added during the season as the platform evolves.

Thank you again for your input!

[krisgerhard]

After posting it yesterday i couldn't stop thinking about implementing a possibility to choose between different point scoring systems when creating a league. Possibly edit it later as well.
That's actually not that hard to implement and maybe that's something we'll do if we get enough divided opinions. At the moment there is already a lot in the backlog :)

[krisgerhard]

Points for Rally Sweden predictions already available. Go and take a look how did you do!

[krisgerhard]

Mexico entry list landed. Predicting is now open :)

[krisgerhard]

New feature: You can now see how other people in your league predicted!
Also do not forget to save your prediction for Rally Mexico! Only 2 days left!

If you have not joined yet and would like your previous predictions from this forum imported to WRC Fan, write me a private message!

[dupanton]

Are you going to continue to just spam your own game here? We have our own pick'ems and that is not going to change (at least not for this year). Try again next year maybe.

[krisgerhard]

We have a good community in our platform from this forum and this thread has proven to be a good way to communicate with these people :)
I hope more people share their opinions about the platform. And hopefully I can bring more news during the season but as we really are just couple of guys doing it as a hobby i can't promise to "spam" too much.

[krisgerhard]

Tour de Corse is starting soon. Make sure you've made your prediction.
WRC Fan has reached 500 users. Join them!

2 new features we've added between two rallies:
* You can now see other leage member's predictions right after predicting closes. Previously you had to wait until the event ends.
* You can see your global position from "Dashboard" and global TOP 25 from "Leaderboards" :)

Good luck!

[KiwiWRCfan]

It is certainly a very easy to use platform.
My predictions for Mexico were no more successful on this platform than on forum's own Pickems

[krisgerhard]

Thank you @KiwiWRCfan!

And for all WRC Fans, save your prediction for Rally Argentina!
If you haven't joined the leage. It's not too late to make a good result - https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums
League is getting pretty tight and points scored per event differ quite a lot.
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[krisgerhard]

Many of you have already made their prediction but for those who haven't - go to https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums, check your score from Rally Argentina and save your Rally Chile 2019 prediction!

[krisgerhard]

We added statistics page to our platform. Check it out - some interesting stuff came up.
One user got the maximum of 25 points from Rallye Monte Carlo.
Another one predicted Marcus Grönholm as a winner of Rally Sweden - he obviously didn't score a lot in that round :)
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Go to https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums to join our private league.

[krisgerhard]

Good to see you guys fighting for the top spot of this league.
Make sure to submit your prediction for Rally Italia Sardegna starting tomorrow!

To keep you up to date WRC Fan userbase has grown to over 700 users.
The largest league is ~250 users and about the same amount of users are active every rally.

[bomber21]

I also joined.
Nice platform but why only top 5 prediction??
It should be top8.

[krisgerhard]

If you go back to the start of this thread you can read our discussion over this in more detail.
But in short.

I know top 8 is the standard on this forum but our view is different. We think predicting after top 5 gets too random.
Last season in 7 events out of 13 atleast one WRC2 driver finished in top 8.

WRCFAN.com focuses on WRC drivers only.

Members of this forum feared that in larger leagues it will not be possible to separate the best from the rest.
Season is half way done and here is the current TOP 10 of a league with 250 members.
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I think this picture shows that choices we made we're not so terrible after all.

I'm pretty sure we'll make some adjustments to the points scoring system after the season ends though.

[krisgerhard]

Rally Germany is up!
Make your prediction https://wrcfan.com/predict/M8tQEQZJ616d9CagpYdK
Your our private league by clicking here https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

Alright! Top of the league is still pretty close. Make your predictions at https://wrcfan.com/predict
If you still haven't joined our league - join us, explore the application & get familiar with it for the next season!
Do it by clicking https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums.

[krisgerhard]

I'll catch after this one, Kradovech ;)
You and others as well. Show your skills and make a prediction!

[krisgerhard]

For the penultimate time this season - time to make your prediction!
Join our league by clicking https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums.

[krisgerhard]

2020 season is around the corner.
We've added powerstage top 3 predicting and changed the points system dramatically.

How are points awarded?

Full points for correctly predicting driver's position. Attribution of points is the same as in WRC.
* 25 points for 1st place
* 18 points for 2nd place
* 15 points for 3rd place
* 12 points for 4th place
* 10 points for 5th place

Half the points when your prediction is off by one position.
* E.g. if you predict participant to finish 2nd but the correct position is 3rd then you are awarded 15 / 2 = 7.5 points

5 points when your prediction is off by more than one position but the participant finishes in TOP 5.

[Sulland]

I also joined.
Nice platform but why only top 5 prediction??
It should be top8.

or top 10. Since 10 get points.

[krisgerhard]

or top 10. Since 10 get points.

I know it's a popular opinion in this forum that TOP 5 is not enough but we're thinking otherwise. In short, we predict top5 because we don't include WRC2 or WRC3 drivers.
Last season already proved us that TOP 5 is enough to separate the best from the rest.
We added modified points system and added Power Stage predictions to do that even better this season.

Join the league and prove it's too easy and boring :)

[krisgerhard]

You have until the start of SS1 to join the 1500+ other users predicting this season 😊

[krisgerhard]

I remind you to submit your Rally Sweden prediction before the start of SS2 (0842 Swedish time).

PM me if you would like to transfer your Monte Carlo prediction to WRCFAN.

[krisgerhard]

We're waiting for your predictions for Rally Guanajuato Mexico.

Recent updates on the platform include:

* ⏱ Live updates!
Points are now updated live during the event. You can check how your prediction is doing any time during the rally. Although we tested this feature already during Rally Sweden, we'd kindly ask for your patience in case any problems occur.

* �� Minor bug fixes
We solved several minor issues our users were reporting. We expect everybody to have a smoother experience now!

* �� Design updates
We updated the underlying design framework so there are slight changes in the overall design. Everything is still where it used to be, but should look nicer ��

[krisgerhard]

Predictions for Rally Estonia are open! We've also made many improvements to the platform so be sure to peek inside!

Click here to join our league ���� https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

1972

We've added positional changes to leagues and global leaderboards

Also important to notice. Since many of you have missed one event I've made a change in the rules - worst result of the season will not be used for the total points calculation. So everybody who has missed an event can still win the league this season! :)

Best of luck!

[krisgerhard]

Go check out the LIVE standing changes! ;)

https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

Sardegna predicting closes in 34 hours. Hurry! Many new features have been launched since Rally Turkey as well ;)

[krisgerhard]

Last hours to submit your prediction!!

Also, we've added some new graphs to visualize your progress better ☺️

[krisgerhard]

I know the majority of this forum prefers your of pickem's game but remember that if you're looking for a simpler and more engaging experience then WRCFan.com is always open to you.
Join motorsportforums' private league by clicking here: https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

We have TOP5 & PS TOP3 predicting + live scores during the event!

[krisgerhard]

About 18 hours left to make your prediction :)

[krisgerhard]

Time to submit your Croatia Rally predictions! Here is our leagues TOP5 ;)
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[krisgerhard]

Time for Rally Portugal. Let's go!!!

https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

And here we go again. Join us! Link 👆👆👆

[krisgerhard]

You have until tommorrow morning (start of SS2) to add or change your prediction.

[krisgerhard]

Ypres is starting in 4.5 hours. Make your prediction and join this forums private league: https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

Yep, it's that time again. Some of you have not made an prediction yet, you have until the start of SS2.
Join our group here: https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

Once again I invite you all to challenge yourself and compete against 1000 users who have already submitted their prediction on WRCFan.

Last season rocked and many of you already participated in our private league but if you haven't already click on the link -> https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums <- to join this community's private league! Predictions close with the start of SS1 tommorrow. Predict event top 5 + power stage top 3 and score up to 90 points.

[pantealex]

43 messages from "krisgerhard"

all of them promoting "his own" stuff

so 0 (zero) messages about rallying!

I dislike this kind of behavior :(

Free advertising should be banned!

[krisgerhard]

43 messages from "krisgerhard"

all of them promoting "his own" stuff

so 0 (zero) messages about rallying!

I dislike this kind of behavior :(

Free advertising should be banned!

I'm sorry for causing dislike.
In my defence - I have no gains personally from these messages. This is a non-profit hobby project, which is pleasing 30 members from this forum.

[krisgerhard]

Reminder for all participants to save your prediction before SS1!.
Join league by visiting https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

We'll close predicting with SS2, so you have until tommorrow to decide this time :)

Join our league here -> https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums

[krisgerhard]

Congratz Siim for winning the league. What a comeback after missing the Greece event :)
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Link to private league in WRCFan.com https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums
See you in 2023!

[krisgerhard]

I'm happy to announce 2023 season in WRCFan. Join our this forums private league HERE (https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums).
Last season we had 28 members in our private league and over 2100 players globally.

All feature requests and ideas are welcome, as always :)

[krisgerhard]

Number of predictions. Currently you have a prediction of top 5. For bigger groups that is not enough, there will be too many ties IMO. In MC we had over 70 people posting and there were quite a lot of equal scores. We predicted the top 8. Considering the numbers have been even 120 people my guess is with your system the top 10 might end up with equal scores (If the rally result is not a complete surprise). On the other hand if you have a group of 10-20 people, top 5 will be completely enough. So maybe it would be a good idea to have the ability to create custom rules for each league and the creator of the league can select if it is top 5, top 8 or anything else.


I will also address this post from 4 years ago by @Kradovech.
Last season the first tie we had in top standings was positions 27th and 28th. And we had over 2100 players.
Biggest league had 550 players and first tie is 19-20th positions.

So I think our scoring system provides enough options for the scores to differ ;)

[krisgerhard]

We now have country specific leagues as well.

If this forums private league is too easy for you.
Join 25 participants in our private league or 5665 participants in global leaderboard.

Link to private league: https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums
Link to site: https://wrcfan.com

[krisgerhard]

Congrats to Jaja for winning our league this season. He also managed to finish P5 in the global standing out of 5800+ users. Impressive!

Thanks for all the participants this season. We've also added country leagues for some additional competition. Join us for next year!

[krisgerhard]

New season is starting soon. Still we predict overall TOP5 and powerstage TOP3.

Last season we had 27 players in this private league and 5800+ globally. As said before, winner of this league also finished P5 globally!

Two days before Monte it already seems that this year is going to be even bigger.
Join us through this link to access the private league: https://wrcfan.com/leagues/motosportforums