2026 Predictions Contest - Printable Version
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2026 Predictions Contest - george - 08-16-2026
Hello, friends!
It is the middle of August which means I'm getting ready to load the season's games into the cardboard predictions contest. I'm a bit nervous as I haven't looked at the code since we migrated the board software, so there's a chance things get off to a rocky start. As long as I'm going to be mucking around with the code a bit, I wanted to highlight some suggestions from the end of last year's contest:
(11-30-2025, 05:45 PM)KartyFan Wrote: I think this format works just fine, but for the sake of throwing out ideas, there used to be an all-Pac-10 predictions pool that awarded points per game as follows:
10 points for picking correct winner
Up to 10 points for margin of victory (if you pick a 1-point loss for Stanford and it's a 2-point win, you get 10 - 3 = 7 points)
Up to 10 points for Stanford score (same formula as above)
Up to 10 points for opponent score
10 point bonus for picking exact game score (or exact spread if desired)
I liked that this format rewarded picking the spread even if total points were off. And it was nice to have a fixed point value per game that was pretty intuitive to follow. You knew the maximum score was 50 points.
I don't remember who the original architect of the current rules was, but there's something appealing about KartyFan's "maximum score is 50 points" tenet. As the contest currently stands maximum points are variable by how many people are actually playing, so people making predictions earlier on in the season have a higher ceiling on point total than those later in the season (when overall engagement with the contest drops off).
I'm not comfortably unilaterally changing the rules that were defined by those much smarter at math and game theory than I, but I'd love to hear people's thoughts here on whether we should update the rules.
(12-01-2025, 04:33 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Hmm, if you want to spice up the contest a little bit, maybe offer bonus points for “best nickname”? Then again just because something is fun doesn’t mean you have to make a contest out of it.
BC
I really like BostonCard's suggestion, how would we want to actually make this happen? We can use the standard polling feature of the board, but there will be a lot of responses and also I wouldn't want to create the poll until the predictions window closes. I'm curious whether people will engage with the poll after the game is already finished and we're on to the next week. Thoughts on how you'd like to see this implemented BostonCard? Or anyone else?
RE: 2026 Predictions Contest - newguy - 08-16-2026
no suggestions here, but i really appreciate that you're doing this. let's hope for a successful season.
RE: 2026 Predictions Contest - 82lsju - 08-16-2026
(08-16-2026, 08:47 AM)george Wrote: Hello, friends!
It is the middle of August which means I'm getting ready to load the season's games into the cardboard predictions contest. I'm a bit nervous as I haven't looked at the code since we migrated the board software, so there's a chance things get off to a rocky start. As long as I'm going to be mucking around with the code a bit, I wanted to highlight some suggestions from the end of last year's contest:
(11-30-2025, 05:45 PM)KartyFan Wrote: I think this format works just fine, but for the sake of throwing out ideas, there used to be an all-Pac-10 predictions pool that awarded points per game as follows:
10 points for picking correct winner
Up to 10 points for margin of victory (if you pick a 1-point loss for Stanford and it's a 2-point win, you get 10 - 3 = 7 points)
Up to 10 points for Stanford score (same formula as above)
Up to 10 points for opponent score
10 point bonus for picking exact game score (or exact spread if desired)
I liked that this format rewarded picking the spread even if total points were off. And it was nice to have a fixed point value per game that was pretty intuitive to follow. You knew the maximum score was 50 points.
I don't remember who the original architect of the current rules was, but there's something appealing about KartyFan's "maximum score is 50 points" tenet. As the contest currently stands maximum points are variable by how many people are actually playing, so people making predictions earlier on in the season have a higher ceiling on point total than those later in the season (when overall engagement with the contest drops off).
I'm not comfortably unilaterally changing the rules that were defined by those much smarter at math and game theory than I, but I'd love to hear people's thoughts here on whether we should update the rules.
(12-01-2025, 04:33 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Hmm, if you want to spice up the contest a little bit, maybe offer bonus points for “best nickname”? Then again just because something is fun doesn’t mean you have to make a contest out of it.
BC
I really like BostonCard's suggestion, how would we want to actually make this happen? We can use the standard polling feature of the board, but there will be a lot of responses and also I wouldn't want to create the poll until the predictions window closes. I'm curious whether people will engage with the poll after the game is already finished and we're on to the next week. Thoughts on how you'd like to see this implemented BostonCard? Or anyone else?
polls appear to be limited to 10 items