Added "2 of 7"

And it's a brilliant looking little badge. I love the fist (not that I'm violent or anything).

Perfect.

Underdog badgelet added. Wrufff

That's a great one, Terry. Woof-woof.

Can't wait to add the cute little puppy to my animal badge zoo collection. :-) I have the early bird, the average game worm... Oh, scratch that, the early bird ate him, the lucky duck, etc.... To add a dog would just be GREAT!

Oh, and there's the owl, and the cat, and the bug...

Hmm, 2 of 7 should show the OTHER side of the knockout fist - a face with only two teeth left

Terry, I know I'm being slightly pedantic, but shouldn't the 'Fantasy Underdog' badge be called the 'Fantasy KO Underdog'

Random idea to prevent cheating with scores (there's more means of communicating than on FT where you can detect it): What if players in an eligible tournament could simply not see their scores or results on Tuesday? Instead the results page would just show something like "Thanks for playing. The %d players supporting you so far with their picks will be proud of you!"

Great idea, Wesley! Usually, my team posts their scores, and those who are unaware of this game might do so, not realizing it, and it could create all sorts of problems. Not knowing your score is a good idea.

Wesley, I was also worried about this. Many players might e-mail their scores or post them on their team's message board, so to be fair to all I think your's is an excellent idea.

You post scores on your messageboards? Why?

I don't know. Someone started it long ago, and people just do that know. Moral support, I think. You know "I got 16 in 112 seconds today. Not good enough to advance in my division". "Too bad, you're so close to 200..." etc.

That's a good idea if cheating becomes an issue. I'll leave it for this week to see how things go. Already have enough moving parts as it is, don't want to mess with the answer stuff which is pretty complicated.

I'm concentrating on the other side of the coin. Sleep learning tapes on Papua's political history, the elevations of the world's lowest mountains, what the spots on hyenas mean in relation to their variety, etc. I'm going to be one buff hombre when my chance in the ring comes up. I promise to do my supporters proud! Unless of course I lose and then there's the seven honorable samurai hari kari tapes to listen to.

Some badgelets aren't all that easy (some people, including me, spent a lot of energy fretting over The Riddle). A badgelet for 1 or 2 wins means you are virtually certain to get one just by playing a few times, even with blind guessing. That's not an incentive to get involved in the fun!

Perhaps I should bump it up to 3 out of 7. The problem is, there's not enough data to work out how often these will be awarded in practice.

Randomly picking, you will pick a winner 6% of the time.

So the odds of getting 2 of 7 right is... er... wow it's been a while since I did combinatorics.... 7 choose 2 * 1/16^7 or something like that....

Guessing 2 winners out of 112 players is not easy. It would be if the top players were placed into tournaments with players with little to no experience, but remember that these tournaments have players that are equal in skill level. Any one of the players in any given bracket can win.

I'd say keep this at 2. It will be a good incentive to try this game and if it comes often, it will keep people playing. If it's too easy, we can always add another at 4. It's only a badgelet after all - those we don't need to be TOO stingy with.

I think the odds are figured along these lines. In a tournament, out of sixteen picks, you have a 1 in 16 chance of winning one, that is a base rate per tournament (the number of T's won't change that individual rate since the outcomes of the other T's don't effect the outcome of an individual one). If you have two tournaments, your chance of winning ONE doubles (1/16+1/16, additive not multiplicative) to 1 in 8. To win two tournaments you are back to the base rate 1 in 16.
To win 1 in 3 tournaments your odds are additive again (1/16+1/16+1/16= 3/16) giving one in about 5
to win 1 in 4 tournaments " " (1/16+1/16+1/16+1/16)one in four
.
.
.
to win 1 in 7 tournaments " " (1/16+1/16+...(7th)1/16=7/16) giving about 1 in 2 tries (you should win 1 of 7 every other time you run the operation).

Now you can go back to the multiplier of doubling to 2 of 7 tournaments ending in a win and you get about 1 in 4 trials you will win 2 of 7.
Of course those are an expected mean to the data. The population of actual results will probably vary between 1 in 2 to 1 in 6.

Your logic doesn't take into account that in order to win a tournament, a player would have to win four games.

That doesn't matter. Every tournament ends with a winner who has accomplished that, no matter how the other tournaments went (and in each of those other six, someone will have won Tue, Wed, Thu & Fri) The basic chance per tournament is one in sixteen.


edit: This is just for the 2 of 7 reward. It is entirely different from figuring numbers on results needed by the fantasy player to win each week (which do concern your pick winning and most points etc.) If you go to a 3 of 7 it would require a doubling of the odds again to 1 in 8 times. Some will do it more often than others and some won't do it at all. that is why there will be a spread on the real population of how many times individuals would qualify for the award.

Oh, but it does matter. If you want to calculate the odds correctly, then you have to use all factors involved.

If you were going to have someone who could win three-fourths of a tournament toward some goal, yes, but only the one in sixteen entered earns anything toward a 2 of 7 or 3 of 7.

edit: With the 3 of 7 odds at once in 8 weeks, by the time a year has gone by, everyone should have had an opportunity to earn the award if they play.

I see that when they have the tournaments, there are 5 or so that are "highlighted". Does that mean that fantasy players can ONLY choose players/winners from those 5+ tournaments?

Also, I wonder who's the favorite to win my tournament (127). The knockout totals of the players are 15, 13, 15, 13, 13, 27, 15, 13, 13, 13, 12, 12, 14, 12.

Well I've picked my seven players for the week, I wont tell you who they are, but if it is anything like fantasy football I have an unerring knack of picking players who get injured and then can't play for months on end.

Just made my picks. Am Cellardoor's biggest fan this week

Two questions:

1. Is our own tournament always included in our picks?

2. Is there any chance that (possibly on Wednesday) we could get to see who picked us for the week?

1. No, everyone gets the same random tournaments.

2. Yep. I'll also display a "Favorites" chart showing who got the top 5 picks in each tournament.

gtho4 is the right person to give you those odds and stats almost to the last digit...he's an amazing wizard at such things

Just love the write ups for each player cute