Xcout

Yes, if interest continues then we can look at covering it more. Always keen to cater for our members in the best way possible. 

Glad to seem some attention to Liga MX, this round was played behind close doors, which made me avoid taking a bet, and afterwards the league was suspended. I hope when play resumes this attention continues.

On its 25th season, the MLS is focused on continue its growth and elevating the quality of their product, as the league level is not where they want to be.
The MLS, single entity in which each teams are owned by the league and individually operated by the league's investors and in which the revenue is shared, key point that has lead to the creation of the Designated Player (DP) to bring the best youth and consolidated talent to the league and push further growth. It is a different way to organize football:
No promotion/relegation, a draft for upcoming talent, an expansion draft (for upcoming teams to gather talent from teams in the league), homegrown funds, teams required affiliation to USL teams or field own reserve side in the USL, same salary cap for all teams (with exceptions as DP rules, allocation money, etc), divided by eastern and western conference, more than two matches per season against some teams, meanwhile against other only one match per season.
The valuation of the league is on the rise, recently huge sums have been paid to have new expansion sides, yet the real financials are not know, but the league acknowledges that the majority of its clubs do not turn a profit. A recently agreed CBA provides stability and gains for the players. One of the added benefits of the league to lure talent is the life in the United States can be calm and safe compared to many other places, many players that have left Liga MX for MLS have stated this. MLS has worked correctly in regards of playing in smaller soccer-specific stadiums, closely located to the community and to foster connection with their communities to generate loyal fan bases, as seen with LA FC, Atlanta United, Orlando City, Toronto FC, etc.
Meanwhile the expansion teams are a positive sign for the league, in my opinion it is lowering the quality of the league. One aspect of this can be seen with the offered odds, some are really low, not worth taking the risk. A lot of teams put their money in the offensive side of things and rarely focus on defending, which leads to low odds in certain markets and to the point in which Zlatan Ibrahimovic had no problem to be an dominating star.  A positive aspect is that there are upsets, but with more expansions sides, they will be fewer in this season and the nexts ones.  A fascinating league once you get the hold of it, but the football level leaves a lot to desire, the quality has improved nevertheless, but MLS has still along way to go. Expect more of the five dominating teams from last seasons:  Seattle Sounders, Toronto FC, Atlanta United, Portland Timbers and Los Angeles FC.
 
 
 

Glad to seem some attention to Liga MX, this round was played behind close doors, which made me avoid taking a bet, and afterwards the league was suspended. I hope when play resumes this attention continues.

Obviously we will be suspending all football competitions until further notice
All selections already posted this week will be void and new threads created once we know what the hell is going on.
I suggest you check back in April 3rd??

It has been decided to suspend the TC Competition until further notice
The fixture has been hit badly this week and i'm guessing it will only get worse in the weeks to come.
The football league, Spanish League and Italian League have already been postponed this week and i'm sure others will follow.
Hopefully we can pick it up where we left off next month, I will try and keep you all informed.
 
BH
 
 

Actually thought this way would be good for a while, would save me looking for a long shot all the time lol
people pick the long shots because they are trying to win the competition, it's the only prize on offer so you want to try and win it. If your £30 behind it's no good picking a 7/4 shot is it 
Personally I would try and get the most winners, you can't beat the feeling of picking winners 

I wouldnt go as far as that ( )
SR is the inverse of amount of winners and vica versa
31 is a prime number so you wouldnt get an integer so lets go for 30
As for strike rate of 20% over 30 days gives you 6 winners & 6 winners over 30 days gives you 20%
the easiest way to see who is the best  (or better) tipster would be to take the actual v expected sr
If you sum the actual winning bets and divide by the total sum of the inverse of odds  then this will give you a comparison figure you could use
IE
If 2 players played the same bets and Player A hits above the expected winners he gets a rating of 62% above standard ( obviously the standard would be 1 act winners = expected winners)
Where as the player B who only hits the hail mary gets a rating of -68% showing its more luck than good judgement as hes not hitting the expected amount of winners for the odds played.
Player A Profit = 4.98pts   Player A w/l w l l l l w w w w l   actual winners 5 odds 2.50 3.00 1.50 5.00 67.00 2.50 4.50 3.00 2.38 11.00   expected winners 3.08 inverse 40% 33% 67% 20% 1% 40% 22% 33% 42% 9%   A/E 62%                               Player B Profit = 57pts   Player B w/l l l l l w l l l l l   actual winners 1 odds 2.50 3.00 1.50 5.00 67.00 2.50 4.50 3.00 2.38 11.00   expected winners 3.08 inverse 40% 33% 67% 20% 1% 40% 22% 33% 42% 9%   A/E -68% That is just an extreme example
but if you use the highest S/R and achieving a £10 profit as the qualifier you would then be able to use the above method to decide on the better tipster from those qualifiers.

Better example (if two players draw both with 50% sr & 10.88 profit but different odds) Player A is the better player
    Player A Profit = 10.88pts   Player A w/l w w l l l w w w w l   actual winners 6 odds 2.50 6.00 1.50 5.00 4.00 2.50 4.50 3.00 2.38 11.00   expected winners 3.15 inverse 40% 17% 67% 20% 25% 40% 22% 33% 42% 9%   A/E 90%                               Player B Profit = 10.88pts   Player B w/l l w l w w w l l w w   actual winners 6 odds 2.50 6.00 1.50 4.00 4.00 2.50 4.50 3.00 2.38 2.00   expected winners 3.61 inverse 40% 17% 67% 25% 25% 40% 22% 33% 42% 50%   A/E 66%                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

*Due to the virus some Italian matches were either postponed or fixtures swapped about, probably best to leave them out for a couple of weeks at least.
 

 

 

 

 
 

The competiton, as is, is excellent.  I would continue to play if the rules did not change.  I am thinking "what is there not to like?"; Forum, I can choose my horses with any objective, I bump into others who want to have fun, and this fella @BillyHills does all the hard work in administering, monitoring, reporting.  And no subscription and for the skillful few prizes!   ?
 
Proposed changes:  All good. 
looking at ways to reward the more consistent players and also ways to keep up the interest to the end of the month...
Proposals as from April 1st
............
Highest S/R with min £10 Profit : £20
............
Cup Runners Up: £10
    These are all welcome.  I particularly like the transferrence of league money to the 2 extra prizes.
Top 25 only to qualify for Cup.
    Is this top 25 even if not in profit?
 
Other:
I am more than impressed by the stalwarts of the forum.  The dozen or so punters who posted over 340 predictions over 2019, a lot of whom stayed in profit for the year.  Now that is consistent in every which way.

I'm not involved in this competition - know nothing about horses - but I do play the football tipster competition. It's sad that players of any of these free games that are kindly put up by @Punters lounge and run by the likes of @BillyHills go against the spirit in which they were clearly intended - which is to play every week for example in the case of the football tipster competition and then let the chips fall where they may in terms of winning or not. If players did that then there would be no need for extra rules like strike rate etc. I can honestly say I play the football tipster competition every week unless I forget for some reason and I've never sought to protect any winning position I might have been in previously by not playing. It's human nature I suppose to try to take advantage but it's a shame that we can't all as players of these games self-regulate.

Final Scores

Next Round

 
 

Proposals 
As promised is the tables thread I am looking at ways to reward the more consistent players and also ways to keep up the interest to the end of the month.
I find that clear leaders sit on their profit and players attempting to qualify for the Cup are doing the same which leads to many players not picking selections in the last couple of days or more.
Just to be clear I have no feelings one way or another on how players go about approaching the competition, we all have our own way of betting, we just want everyone to feel they have something to play for.
I have noticed over the last few months some rumblings about the way players approach the Naps competition and there is no doubt we have had a shift in more players going for the speculative outsider than we have before.
I had a look at the figures and we are regularly hitting around the 19% S/R these days where as before we were often around the 25% mark. This is totally down to more players going for 25/1+ selections.
The players who genuinely sift through the cards to find their best bet of the day feel as though they have no chance in winning the monthly competition. I can see once a player has hit a 50/1 winner just playing for a Cup place is not the best of incentives.
I think we can reward performance and profit and have been looking at the last 12 months figures to see how we can do it.
At first I thought it would be best just to award the player with the highest strike rate a percentage of the winners prize but I also don't think encouraging people to select 1/4 shots everyday is helping anyone, so taking that a step further, what about if we had a profit figure that you needed to surpass as well?
If we say took the highest strike rate of those that made a profit in the month of at least £10 that would kill off any ideas of odds on shots every single day. Of course you would expect some short priced horses to be chosen and I have no problem with that, if its a Nap, its a Nap but by having the £10 figure it really rewards those that have performed well that month.
I have done a couple of tables to show how it would have panned out since January 2019 up until last month. Interestingly just 2 winners of the comp came out with the best S/R. 8 players were in the top 4 cash prizes but it would have given 7 players a prize that wouldn't have normally received anything. I would say overall that suits most type of punter. Of course people may bet differently knowing about the new prize.
In the second table i took away the upper profit limit and this highlighted the problem of players sitting on a small profit just to qualify for the Cup, I feel this would just get worse if there was a prize for the highest S/R only.
I propose a prize of £20 for player with the highest SR that has at least £10 profit on the month. This prize may well go to a player in the top 4 already but the winner of the whole competition will still quite rightly win the most cash whatever the result.
The second part of the new formula is to limit the amount of players qualifying for the Cup. At the minute anyone finishing in profit (or even, lol) gains automatic qualification into the following months KO Cup. This can be as many as 30+ players and this often leads to a few players reaching a profit figure and then stopping posting for last few days of the month, or even worse players reaching 15 bets and then just stopping. 
If we had a figure of 25 players only to qualify for the Cup then it would make it more exciting and something to aim for in the final few days of the month. I will also award a runners up prize for the KO Cup which has been asked for in the past.
I am not looking to change any of the main rules of the comp, i think we should keep the main core of what the comp is all about ie; picking one horse per day. So we wont be changing that or messing about with stakes etc.....
Let me know if you think this would be a way forward, please bare in mind we have a budget and we want to keep things simple.
 
Proposals as from April 1st
Winner : £60
Second : £30
Third : £20
Fourth: £10
Highest S/R with min £10 Profit : £20
Cup Winner: £30
Cup Runners Up: £10
Top 25 only to qualify for Cup.
 
Table of those with the highest S/R and achieving a £10 profit 

 
 
Table of those with the highest S/R, no upper limit on profit
Those in grey did not make the £10 profit mark.

 

**The next Last Man Standing Competition will start on the weekend March 7th/8th**
**CASH Prize of £250 to the winner ***
 
All players welcome and the first selection thread will be put up in plenty of time.
We have 10 weeks of the season left so hopefully we will get it finished, anyone left in the comp at the end of the Premier League season will share the prize.
Meanwhile the current consolation competition will carry on as normal next week.
 
Many thanks, BH.

Welcome a new edition of Last Man Standing
Cash prize = £250 
Rules Here
Simple really, choose any team to win their match this week to go through to the next round. You can only pick the team once throughout the whole competition.
One week you can play your Joker which means you get the draw as well and if you miss one week you can use a lifeline which means you are automatically on the highest placed side in the league table.
 
Week 1 Matches
 

 
 

Hello Foo_Fighter!
Nice to see you sharing your thoughts! I Hope next time I see it on time.

CD Olimpia vs CD Marathon - Over 2.5 goals @1.72 bet365
One my favorite leagues when it comes to total goals scored in the match. Probably another match where plenty of goals will be scored by both teams. 
Good luck folks. ? ? 

14:50 Southwell, Godfather @ 5 at Bet365

At least you got a bus pass to look forward to 

Thanks a lot BH! ??

Final Table
UBET10 wins the December competition with a terrific total
Tipsterix, Internetmails and a last gasp winner from Vangovin fills the places.
Marmalade won the KO Cup and 25 players will contest that next month.
I will do an overall table for 2019 later so it all it remains is for me to thank everyone for taking part throughout the year.

Prizes
£80 : Ubet10
£40 : Tipsterix
£20 : Internetmails
£10 : Vangovin
£30 : Marmalade
Can all players end me their PayPal email, PL name and which prizes they are claiming.
The top 3 can also claim some PL Merchandise, so they need to send me their home address.
 

 
 

Overall Stats for 2019
147 Players took part throughout the year placing nearly 18,000 selections
The table show those with at least 85 bets to their name.
Roll of Honour

 

 
Heres to 2020, we all start with a clean slate!!
 
 

Punters Lounge Poker Meet-Up virgin here! Go easy on me! I bruise easily!

Happy New Year to everyone. Hope you all had a good night last night and are ready to play our finale tonight. Don't forget there are extra points at stake with our multiplier so still plenty of added prize money to play for.
Game is set up and registering.
 

Oh nearly forgot, thanks Graham for all you do on here to make it a great site to be on