Wimbledon Contest Rule

[PeterSkan]

Give me your thoughts ...

[PeterSkan]

Oops ... sorry for the typo in the poll...still getting used to this new rubber mat keyboad my son installed.

[PeterSkan]

Oops ... sorry for the typo in the poll...still getting used to this new rubber mat keyboad my son installed.

Hey - who fixed the typo? Neat. Thanks, whoever you are.

[dryrunguy]

Hey - who fixed the typo? Neat. Thanks, whoever you are.

"Twas me, Peter. No problem. :)

[beaujarkko]

I actually really liked the 30 ranked rule; I thought it was a positive enhancement :)

[Moose]

I'm a huge fan of the 30 rule also. It forces you to be a little more creative in drafting a team.

[JTContinental]

Makes no never mind to me. No matter what the rule, I'm bound to finish 85th, anyway. :)

[Drop-shot]

I'm a huge fan of the 30 rule also. It forces you to be a little more creative in drafting a team.

Agreed

[patrick]

I'm a huge fan of the 30 rule also. It forces you to be a little more creative in drafting a team.

Knew you would like it especially after defending your title at the French Open. Personally, I like the AO rule where one of the contestants selected seed must be out of the Top 10.

[oploskoffie]

Hey, I'm over 30 and I expect this rule to remain the same :p

[patrick]

Unless things change, Wimbledon will be like the French Open so I better work on creativity :ponder:

[--cj--]

Love the 30!

[e11even]

I'm okay with the 30-rule, too! :thumbsup:

[MikeG1224]

Peter,

IMO, how could anyone reasonably argue for reducing the minimum to 25? If anything, I think an increase would be more logical.

Please consider the following:

(1) Let's start with the least total minimum. Given a 6 player minimum, this would be 12, attained by picking the # 1, 2 & 3 seeds for both the men & the women. What can be reasonably anticipated were the minimum to be set at 12? Obviously, the final results would show a clustering of scores for many of the contestants. This is not a good result for a contest aimed at attracting readers to participate. Other than to make the PC Police positively orgasmic by offending the least number of contestants as possible, what is accomplished if say 60 out of the 80 entrants come within 50 points or so of the winner?

(2) In (1) above, we demonstrated that a minimum sum of 12 is inadequate, unless our intention is to hold a contest where No "Adult" is Left Behind, e.g., Dubya, HappyMing, N.O., or Miss Pee Che.
Therefore, some minimum [either (a) explicitly set by a minimum # rule or (b) implicitly established by a rule that requires a participant to pick a non-seeded player or a non-top 16 seeded player] is absolutely required to allow for a more normal distribution of final results.
So if we stick with a minimum sum total rule, the challenge becomes what is the "optimum" or "near optimum" minimum #?

(3) To avoid writing a thesis, let me cut corners and just mention that if I were to construct a team of the top 6 men/women seeds (by alternating M,W,M,W,M,W), then the sum would be 21 (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6=21). Common sense would indicate that our minimum must be higher than 21; otherwise any fool like I could submit a likely competitive entry consisting of a combination of the top 6 M/W seeds. Hence, IMO, 21 as a minimum sum total is unimaginative and would again result in a nesting of the final results, i.e., too many entrants winding up near the same final, winning number.

(4) OK, if I am making sense, then most of you will agree that Peter's contest needs a minimum sum greater than 21. Simply stated, here's why I favor 30 instead of 25. By tweaking the above example, suppose a contestant thinks Federer is beat up from his FO humiliation and will be ousted before the 4th Round. Then by selecting M/W seed #s 2 through 7 as the entry, he/she simultaneously has a probably competitive entry and the sum of these seeds is 27 ( 2+3+4+5+6+7=27) which would meet the 25 minimum but not the 30 minimum sum requirement.

(5) Do we want a contest where by simply picking seeds 2 thru 7 on the men/women's sides will result in a most likely competitive entry (say top 30% to 40%)?

I say NO, so vote 30!
==============

Peter, as i mentioned to you last month, before Serena, Maria, & Amelie made me a loser in the FO contest, I do have major reservations about the weighting factor you have assigned to Dominance. Maybe we can discuss this after the USO?
One final thought: I've seen you post historical stats from whence you began your contests; ideally, you would have used the same set of rules since the contest's inception, because, as you are aware, significant, rule changes from time to time render the historical data results meaningless.

Thanks,
Mike

P.S. I was unable to post this reply on ESPN. So, if you think this post has merit, please feel free to air it on TOB.