Let me look into a couple of things. I may not be able to offer a prize. Either that or I wouldn’t be able to pay out until August or September.
I was appreciative of the prize from the World Cup game, but I am more than willing to simply play for forum cred (or ‘Chick points,’ if you will), and for the pride of John Henrying Trig’s surely evil and insidious AI by goal difference.
So it appears that the Euro tournament begins this Friday. Yikes!
I didn’t even realize what was happening on the international side until @Rock8man brought it up.
So I am thinking that maybe I could run a pool with the following rules (sorry for the spammy post):
Teams will be put into 6 groups based on their ELO rankings (big thanks to @Dissensus for suggesting ELO rankings) as of June 7, 2021. The top 4 ranked teams will be placed into group A and the next 4 highest ranked teams will be placed into group B and so on until group F has the four lowest ranked teams.
Each player will choose 2 teams from Group A and 2 teams from each of the five remaining groups for a total of 12 teams.
A player will receive 3 points for each win in regulation time (90 minutes) by a team they have chosen.
A player will receive 1 point for each draw by a team they have chosen. A game will only be considered a draw during the group rounds. Different rules apply during the knockout rounds.
A player will receive 2 points for each win by a team they have chosen that goes to extra time or penalty kicks.
A player will receive 1 point for each loss by a team they have chosen that goes to extra time or penalty kicks.
Groups:
Group A:
Belgium
France
Portugal
Spain
Group B:
Italy
England
Denmark
Netherlands
Group C:
Germany
Switzerland
Sweden
Wales
Group D:
Croatia
Ukraine
Poland
Turkey
Group E:
Czech Republic
Hungary
Austria
Russia
Group F:
Finland
Scotland
Slovakia
North Macedonia
In the event that two or more teams are tied at the end of all the games, the following tiebreakers will be applied:
#1 The player with the highest positive goal differential.
#2 The player with the most goals scored.
#3 With your picks, choose the amount of goals that you think will be scored in the final game during regular time and extra time if needed (if the game goes to penalties, none of those goals will count). You will get 3 points for the correct total, 2 points for being 1 goal over or under and 1 point for being 2 goals over or under.
You have until just before kickoff of the first game, which is Italy vs Turkey on June 11th. If you submit your picks early and want to make a change, feel free to do so, as long as it’s before kickoff of the first game. After that, all picks are locked in.
Entry Fee: There is no entry fee. It won’t cost you anything to play.
Prize: I’m willing to put up the equivalent of $60 in the Humble Store. I choose the Humble Store because they don’t seem to region lock their keys unlike what Steam does to me. If you aren’t a PC gamer (shame), and there is a console game on Amazon, let me know and I can buy that for you and have it shipped to you.
Due to how this pool is structured, you can’t have an unlimited amount of people in the game or you run the risk of having a bunch of duplicate picks which isn’t a lot of fun. So there is no more than 8 players to a pool. I am willing to run three of these pools.
Due to how this pool is structured, you can’t have an unlimited amount of people in the game or you run the risk of having a bunch of duplicate picks which isn’t a lot of fun. So I do reserve the right to place various people in various pools to try and have the most diverse set of picks.
I realize there isn’t much time to research the teams as the first game is this Friday.
If you do want to play, please post something in this thread (does someone want to start another thread or a dedicated Euro 2020 thread?) and I’ll keep track of things. Please don’t post your picks in the thread, instead PM them to me (I won’t be playing) and I’ll post everything at kickoff.
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have.
Please note that the groups I have posted are not the groups that each team was drawn into for the tournament. They are based on ELO rankings.
The tournament groups are as follows:
Group A:
Italy
Switzerland
Turkey
Wales
Group B:
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
Russia
Group C:
Austria
Netherlands
North Macedonia
Ukraine
Group D:
Croatia
Czech Republic
England
Scotland
Group E:
Poland
Slovakia
Spain
Sweden
Group (of death) F:
France
Germany
Hungary
Portugal
Sounds fun, I’m up for it! Thanks for putting this together.
Yes, thanks marquac!
Thanks to you, I’m going to spend the $70 or so for getting ESPN for a month through Youtube Live TV for sure now.
I’ll work on my picks today and tomorrow. This was great fun two three years ago.
Who’s starting the Euro thread? Do we need two threads like with the world cup? One with no match discussions, and one with live discussions?
This was fun last time, for all that I did poorly. Happy to play again.
Once there is a new thread, I will repost the pool details. So far we have 12 people:
rowe33
Rock8man
rho21
Dissensus
Jack_Howitzer
Thraeg
CraigM
Chappers
AWS260
LokeUtgaard
Seppey
Canuck
I’m in too, but will need a day or two to get my picks set.
You have my axe! (I’m in)
Happy to help fill out a bracket with semi random picks. I did just finish watching Ted Lasso, so I’m basically an expert on soccer now.
Look, I’m going to be able to legitimately claim watching the games is work related this time (I took my current position a month after the last round), so I should probably join too.
I still know nothing about global football (as we call it), but why not :)
I’m in as well, just don’t tell @Dave_Perkins about the competition. He will use Math to win it again.
Or color of uniforms.
Reminder:
Aww crap, I had totally forgotten about that group. Looks like Löw will achieve legendary status by getting Germany eliminated from two tournaments at the group stage.
Wow! This is a group of death alright.
This is his last rodeo, too. Gonna ride off into the sunset, or be driven out.
I wished Flick was already in charge. At least he is pretty much the perfect solution for Löw’s succession after years without a suitable candidate in sight.
Oh, for the prize, if you aren’t a computer gamer (shame on you), I am very happy to also offer a $60 gift card to @vesper’s game store if you would prefer that to a computer game.