Change In Pickems Scoring In All 3 Series Being Considered;Poll Added

[slorydn1]

I have been thinking about making a change in the way the pickems are scored-definitely for next year, and maybe even for this year (I could make them "retroactive" simply by rescoring the spreadsheets I already have done-but that would pretty much require a unaminous yes vote by all the "main players" who are involved in the pickems). It would really be quite simple for me to do, the hard work of typing in the players and their picks on the spreadsheets aleady have been done, obviously, so its just a matter of recounting the bonus points.

What I am proposing is the following:

Awarding 3 bonus points (up from 2) to the player(s) who correctly pick the race winner.

Awarding 2 bonus points (up from 1) to the player(s) who correctly pick any other top 10 finisher in their respective slot.

Leaving any other pick who makes it into the top 10 at 1 point.


We have been having way too many ties this year, not really a problem in and of itself, but when you have so few people that are in it for the long haul, the specter of a "tied season" really becomes a possibilty. Since wins are the tie breaker for the season standings, I really see where this could end up being a problem.

I have not run through any simulations as of this time, so as to not have any data clouding my thoughts on this change if we did vote to make it retroactive.

SO...in summary, the total number of possible points scored in a week would increase to 31 instead of 21....

If you got everything right that would be 4 points for the race winner, plus 3 points each for the other top 10 positions (4+27=31). Right now its only 3 points total for the winner of the race. By changing it it makes it harder for the people who dont pick actual positions correctly to catch back up by picking more drivers in the rest of the top 10 , thereby reducing the number of ties.

Im posting a poll in this thread, but please also leave a post with a yes or no vote if you are one of the "main players" in any of the three pickems as there is no way for me to know who voted what by the poll.

As far as I can tell, those players are (in no particular order):

Alexamateo
Djarumdudley
Sparky1329
Damg75
Princess4e
Slorydn1
Themo

A yes vote means that you want to make the change retroactive to the beginning of the season, a no vote means that you do not.

If the result ends up being no, then the change won't be made at all this year, but it will probably be made for next year regardless.

[slorydn1]

I voted yes

[Sparky1329]

I voted yes.

In all honesty, there are a handfull of drivers who finish in the top ten mst of the time. The pickem points are close because we all pretty much know who they are. Adding a twist to the points system can't hurt.

[slorydn1]

That blanket statement is pretty much true in Truck and nationwide, maybe not so much in Cup. We as a group avg about 6 picks in the top 10 (regardless of exact finish position) in natwide and truck but only about 4 in Cup. This is compounded by the fact that in the lower 2 series, if one picks Kyle Busch to win one is almost guarenteed the winners bonus (I just can't bring myself to pick shrub to win if Harv is in the race-it becomes REAL easy if Harvick aint racin, LOL...)

But yeah, when Harv, Shrub, Cuz, Kez, and lil Joey (or Denny for that matter) are in the field in Natwide we are 90 pct guarenteed to have at least 5 points plus whatever bonuses for position, so the real skill becomes figuring out which week Allgaier or Leffler, for example, are gonna step it up.

In cup u may have anyone of about 20 drivers win the race, up to maybe 30 with a realistic shot of a top 10 finish, and maybe 15 who score regularly, with about 6 or 7 u can count on no matter what track type it is (Unibrow, Gordo, The Closer, Shrub, Denny, Cuz, Matt the Brat, the Biff and Smoke), of course not taking into consideration any tissues that may arise during the race....

[themo]

I Voted YES

[Sparky1329]

That blanket statement is pretty much true in Truck and nationwide, maybe not so much in Cup. We as a group avg about 6 picks in the top 10 (regardless of exact finish position) in natwide and truck but only about 4 in Cup. This is compounded by the fact that in the lower 2 series, if one picks Kyle Busch to win one is almost guarenteed the winners bonus (I just can't bring myself to pick shrub to win if Harv is in the race-it becomes REAL easy if Harvick aint racin, LOL...)

But yeah, when Harv, Shrub, Cuz, Kez, and lil Joey (or Denny for that matter) are in the field in Natwide we are 90 pct guarenteed to have at least 5 points plus whatever bonuses for position, so the real skill becomes figuring out which week Allgaier or Leffler, for example, are gonna step it up.

In cup u may have anyone of about 20 drivers win the race, up to maybe 30 with a realistic shot of a top 10 finish, and maybe 15 who score regularly, with about 6 or 7 u can count on no matter what track type it is (Unibrow, Gordo, The Closer, Shrub, Denny, Cuz, Matt the Brat, the Biff and Smoke), of course not taking into consideration any tissues that may arise during the race....

Yeah, Cup is tougher because there are more drivers who are capable of strong finishes. I'm just happy that you are continuing with the pickems.

[Mark]

How are you resolving ties? In the main pickems if two have the same points then the player with the highest scoring first place pick is ranked ahead if these are the same then go from 2nd place and so on. Ties are rare.

[slorydn1]

How are you resolving ties? In the main pickems if two have the same points then the player with the highest scoring first place pick is ranked ahead if these are the same then go from 2nd place and so on. Ties are rare.

One has to remember, I inherited a "legacy" system that has been around since about 2003. Its a really simple system because it is scored manually. We were doing this well before the automated pick-ems came around. Stan and I had dicussed once before changing the the scoring system back around the 2006-2007 time frame, but since he was running it and was used to the way it was he didn't wanna mess with it.

One also has to remember that in the automated system the points are awarded, for lack of a better term, in a dual points mode-a person scores a number of points for each correct position in the top 8, and where ever that points ranking lands them it is converted to a different set of points and that's where the player lands that week.

These manual pickems are in a single points mode, again for lack of a better term. What ever the points a player accrues for each spot in the top 10 is the points they score that week, without a conversion.

In the automated pickems, at the Cup race at Talladega for example, the picks R56Meaux made accrued him 22 points for the race, and since he had the most points for that race that was converted to a first place points total of 250 for the race. COD, who finished with 20 points for his picks and was the 2nd most, got 240 for the race and on down the line. Of course since you created it, you know all this :. It makes for a complicated system that works really well when you have alot of people picking (like the 100+ we get for the F1 pickems, for example).

In these manual pickems its straight up counting the points with no conversion, so the winner, Princess4e had 6 of her 10 picks finish in the top 10 (6 base points) and she correctly picked p8 and p10 (+2 bonus points) so she finished with 8 points and thats her score for the week. Sparky had 5 of her 10 picks in the top 10 (5 base points) and correctly picked p2 and p3 (+2 bonus) so she finished with 7. Its a more simple system, designed to keep mistakes by the person tabulating the points (in this case ME) down to a minimum. To have to sit there and go down the line and see where each person's p1 pick actually finished and try to remember that when scoring the pickem's is a time consuming and possibly mistake creating extra step that really isn't needed, I dont believe, especially when there are only 5-7 players in each series, anyway.

We've never had a tie in the end of season standings that I can recall, I was just getting worried that we may be heading down that road. I mean , with 36 races in cup, that's 360 picks being made over the season (360 base points) plus 396 available bonus points for a total of 756 points for the season available. I won the Cup pickems last year with a total of only 210 points scored so there is alot room for improvement to be sure, but by increasing the amount of posible outcomes it makes the chance of a tied season a little less probable, and if we can weed out more of the tied weekly winners, that makes the tie-breaker less likely to be tied also, if that makes any sense. I was just trying to figure out a way to do it without making my week to week life more difficult.....

For full disclosure, I had actually toyed with the idea of doing away with the manual pickems entirely if we could have gotten the Nationwide and Truck series added to the automated system, and if there could be 10 positions picked instead of 8-but I understand and appreciate why there wasnt really room for that and how the simple change from 8 to 10 picks would not be a so simple change to the automated system-so we are still doing the manual deal.

[slorydn1]

Actually, Mark, looking over my long winded answer I never really did answer your question (so what else is new, right?)...

Ties for the week are simply NOT dealt with, they are what they are, a tie. If the tie is for P1 then all involved get credit for a win. That's the way Stan had it set up, and I am not inclined to mess with that, at least not yet.
Ties for the season are dealt with as they are in most racing series:

a) Number of wins
b) Number of p2's
c) Number of p3's (and so on down the line)....
d) The number of times the players picked the race winner correctly....
e) If all else fails it goes to a Coin Toss (If it's good enough for the NFL, it's good enough for us, LOL)

[princess4e]

I vote yes.