If you're here (and my psychic powers tell me you are), you're in the right place.
I'm kismet (didn't guess that one, did you?), your all-powerful game host and overlord of lame jokes, appalling colour schemes and 'cute' smileys, and this is the third season of F1 Pools.
There's been no tinkering with the game rules (except the rather obvious adjustments to accommodate yet another qualifying format) so if you're a seasoned veteran, you should know how this works. Just jump right in and post your guess for round 1. If you're a rookie, you may first want to consult the section cleverly and imaginatively titled "Rules" at the end of this post.
Anyway, here are the duels for round 1:
[COLOR=red][B][SIZE=3]F1 Pools 2006: Bahrain[/SIZE] Qualifying duels: Race duels: [/B] 1 Renault - McLaren 7 Renault - McLaren 2 Ferrari - Toyota 8 Ferrari - Toyota 3 Williams - Honda 9 Williams - Honda 4 Red Bull - BMW Sauber 10 Red Bull - BMW Sauber 5 MF1 - Toro Rosso 11 MF1 - Toro Rosso 6 Super Aguri - Toro Rosso 12 Super Aguri - Toro Rosso[/COLOR]
Dog, those new names take some getting used to... Also, what's with the one-colour-fits-all red? Is it like the new black or something? I was sad enough to try and assign a descriptive colour for each team (because that's something an overlord of appalling colour schemes would do) but I ran out of reds. What's wrong with greens, yellows, lilacs etc?
Deadline: anything that's posted and/or edited before qualifying starts is OK.
The preferred format for guesses is 122 XXX 12X XX1 but I'm not picky; if it makes sense, it’s fine by me.
Good luck, everyone! May the best man/woman/boy/girl/pet cat win.
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Rules (yeah, finally!)
F1 Pools is a game where we celebrate (or curse) team effort rather than individual drivers' brilliance (or ineptitude, if more appropriate). After all, F1 is a team sport.
The game is loosely based on footie (soccer) betting. In a nutshell: I pick team-vs-team duels (qualifying and race separately), you predict the outcomes and post your educated guesses in the appropriate game thread (such as this one for round 1) using the hopefully familiar 1X2 system where 1 = home win, X = draw and 2 = away win. The home team is the one that’s mentioned first.
Both reliability and pace need to be considered when rating a team’s performance in relation to its duel opponent according to the principles laid out below. Every car/driver combo that either sets a time in qualifying or finishes the race counts towards a duel outcome. Note: they should actually reach the chequered flag, simply being classified isn't enough. Possible grid and/or time penalties are ignored but DQs stand. Failures to set a qualifying time and/or finish the race can and will be used against a team - assuming their opponent fares any better in the reliability department.
The basic idea is that by picking "1" you're predicting a home team sweep. Logically "2" is then an away team sweep which leaves "X" for everything else. So far so simple. It gets a bit more complicated if and when people start falling off the track, blowing up their engines and what not, so here's a summary of how various race/qualifying results translate into duel outcomes (team A vs team B) :
1 the home team gets all its cars nicely lined up ahead of their opponents on the timesheets corresponds to finishing orders AABB, AAB, AB and just A see item * below X a "draw": 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 the away team that does the winning* If you can’t beat them on track, you can still earn brownie points for reliability. To punish evil (joke!) one-car operations, 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 a 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.
Confused? Don't be, this is easier than it probably looks. Plus you can always ask for clarification.
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 “dead cert”. Instead of some fancy calculating odds stuff, the mark distribution of your guesses is 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. Points will be added up throughout the season and the person with the highest points total will join double champion dnbn in the F1 Pools Hall of Fame. Unless he makes it three in a row, of course.
That's about it. I think. Now all you need to do is participate en masse and I'll be one happy camper.
