The NFL Thread 2014: New England Patriots Win Super Bowl XLIX

[ljigga]

RolStoppable said:

MTZehvor said:

ljigga said:
Thought we can't change MNF picks? Rol?

I believe you can, so long as you don't predict the same margin of victory as anyone else.

You can even predict the same margin as long as that won't result in a tie with someone else. An exception can be made when the player in question isn't in the run for a top 5 position, because a potential tie won't change anything in the weekly results.

In practice, yesterday Kenology submitted a NO by 7 prediction after the late bunch of Sunday games had ended. That's the point where the no-ties-allowed rule triggers, because any earlier would make it a nightmare for everyone involved (way too many scenarios for how a week could play out to account for, on top of several not submitting their picks until a few hours before the deadline of the early Sunday games). The other two people who had NO by 7 were myself (but I was one game ahead already) and ljigga (was tied with Kenology up to that point, but had a different SNF pick, so a tie was ultimately not possible either).

The existence of this rule is due to it being a preemptive strike against superchunk who would check the spreadsheet religiously. Suppose a scenario where two players are in the run for first place in the weekly results, one could easily choose to go for a tie to get a guaranteed 6 PP instead of either 7 or 5. It would also be recorded as a first place in the standings, and the amount of those is the first tie-breaker step when two players have the same record and the same amount of PP. Such a scenario (or similar) makes settling for a tie an appealing proposal, but I am not allowing such a cheap strategy. While the vast majority of players never even considers to play the system, I still had to be prepared for the potential that a few would try to do it.

Thanks for clearing it up rol