Game rules (from kismet's post)
F1 Pools is a game loosely based on soccer betting (1X2 bet or match betting) – only with F1 teams instead of soccer teams and with random(ish)ly picked 'duels' instead of actual soccer matches.
Your job is to pick the right outcome for each 'team 1 vs team 2' duel. There are three possibilities:
(1) team 1 win
(X) draw
(2) team 2 win
Because F1 isn't soccer and because each F1 team has two car/driver combos, picking a winner isn't quite as simple as guessing who's ahead when the checkered flag waves. Or it kind of is but you need to consider both cars of a team – not just the higher-placed one. This means that both reliability and pace are important.
The basic idea is that by picking "1" you're predicting a team 1 sweep. Logically, it follows that "2" is a team 2 sweep and that obviously leaves "X" for everything else. While ”everything else” may seem like an awfully vast selection of possible outcomes, a fairly loose definition of a draw was necessary in order to keep it as a realistic option. Here's a summary of how various qualifying and race results translate into duel outcomes (team A vs team B) :
1 team 1's cars nicely lined up ahead of their opponents on the results sheets
corresponds to finishing orders AABB, AAB, AB and just A
see item * below
X a mixed grid/split result/any deviation from the above (or below)
i.e. finishing orders ABAB, BABA, ABBA, BAAB, ABA, BAB, ABB, BAA
see item ** below
2 as in 1, but now it's team 2 that's ahead
* If you can’t beat them on track, you can still earn points for reliability. A finishing order ABB (team A wins on pace, B on reliability) translates into an 'X' because this is supposed to be a team sport and there are 2 cars in a team. However, an AB finish does not warrant a punishment for unreliability because team A hasn’t done any worse than team B in that respect (A wins on pace, no one on reliability, hence the outcome is '1').
** No unreliabilty punishments for draws. An ABA result is an X and a mission accomplished for team B in that they’ve managed to beat one of their opponents on track.
As for scoring, points will be awarded for every correct answer and since this is a betting-inspired game, guessing an unlikely outcome right is worth more than being right about something expected. Instead of any fancy odds-calculating, your guesses are used as an indicator of probability so that for each correct guess, your score will be 1 + the fraction of players that guessed wrong. An example: let's say 50 % of you have picked 1, 40 % X and the remaining 10 % 2. If 1 is the correct guess, the clever 50 % will score 1 + 0.5 = 1.5 points. Similarly, if X is the way to go, the score will be 1 + 0.6 =1.6 points etcetera. The results for each individual round will be determined using this method (the highest score wins, obviously) and the top 10 players will be awarded championship points according to the 25-18-15 etc. points system used in real F1. Players with the same score will get the sum of the point scoring positions divided by the number of players that have the same score. For example if two players have both the top score then their points will be (25+18)/2 = 21.5. F1 Pools champion will be the person who amasses the highest number of championship points over the season.
