Could you further elaborate on this, clowncar?
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Also, two questions for NFL Trends.
- Are there any monthly contests like we have here?
- are there any Baseball contests?
Not sure which part you want elaboration so I will elaborate on both, and in the context of the GN contest, rather than the Hilton. But some of this applies to the Hilton.
* The card for the contest comes out at a particular time on a particular day.
* Then the player has X number of days to get their picks in before the deadline passes (Window).
* As the contest card will have a set line (that is to say that it is static and does not move during the entire window), but the actual line does often change, there is the ability of the contest player to play the steam. Example: Jets -1 at home to Buffalo on the contest card. Friday afternoon the same game has a line of Jets -3.5 to Buffalo (using an extreme example). The player can then play the Jets -1 in the contest knowing they have huge value. I call this steam chasing.
* The Steam chasers plays are generally put in as late as possible so they can get the best value and because the line could move back the other way. Most, but not all, of these players couldn't pick their nose on their own.
* You particularly see this strategy by the leaders. If you are going to catch the leaders, you will have to make up ground by doing better than what the market says were the best plays of the week. No easy task.
* The selections (at least in GN) are time stamped so you can see when they get put in. All the late plays are basically the steam chasers playing the same games.
* These players, while using good strategy for the contest, appear to be one trick ponies however (most anyway). As an example, on the last week of the GN contest the people from 11-20 all played steam. Overwhelmingly so. In other words, knowing that the people above them were steam chasers (mostly) and were going to chase steam again, rather than going directly opposite or avoiding steam so they could move up into a big pay position, they STILL played steam. Ridiculously stupid of them but they almost all did it. You can look at the contest results from the week prior to the end of the year and the final picks. It was hilarious. The top 5 had to be celebrating because they were going to be hard to catch because they shared so many of the plays of the people below them. So if the steam does really good, the 11-20 spots don't gain much, if anything, but if the steam ran bad that week, they fall out of the money position. The risk reward calculation was pathetically bad by those players. As it turned out, the steam ran amazingly good (again) the final week of the year. So those people largely did ok ... but I have to wonder if they asked themselves why they couldn't make up ground on those above them when they went 5-2 or 6-1 .... durr ... cause you have the same side as the people above you.
* In any event, the static line with a long window to make plays makes the contest pretty stupid, really.
Now, to further elaborate on the contest being poorly run ...
1. The rules are not stated clearly.
2. The contest does not follow its own rules. Games within the window for being available to bet per the rules were not offered the final week but games outside of the window for being available to bet per the rules were offered the final week. Think about that for a second. After 17 weeks or whatever it was, they changed the rules arbitrarily on the FINAL week. That takes an idiot of monumental proportions to do that or someone with really big balls.
3. The contests are way too top heavy.
4. The contests are very poor at maintaining interest if one falls out of the running for the pay positions. In the GN contest for instance, once you are basically eliminated from contention, there is no reason to submit plays anymore. There is no late season prize, or 2h prize or anything along those lines for that person to get their money worth of entertainment from the contest.
5. In the case of the GN they were extremely slow at providing the picks after deadline. You often didn't get to see opponents picks until an hour before kickoff.
6. There is no transparency for Weekday games. No, you read that correctly. They do not post players picks of games on the weekday games until Saturday with the rest of the plays. That is almost unfathomable, as transparency to integrity is absolutely essential.
I could keep going ... they just run the contests so half-assed that it is frustrating to participate.
Other than the final week, I could have given you 10 games and known the leaders would be on those sides in overwhelming numbers. I couldn't have done it the final week because I gave those people credit for having more than one single strategy (aka one trick ponies), when they didn't.
Hope that helps.
