LDOG

South Africa wins in Vancouver and retakes the 4th place in general standings from England. Olympic qualification is looking nasty for european teams as things stand. Only 4 stages to go for England to turn things around. If they don't, we are only going to see (at best) 2 out of GB, France and Spain in Tokyo.

I like this. I'm bored to see our athletes celebrating qualifications and then finishing 30+ at the olympics.

IHF president is egyptian, no surprise. America is unbalanced because outside ARG, BRA & CHI the rest of the southern nations are simply terrible. From the north Greenland and Cuba are very decent and clearly the 4th and 5th strongest teams in the region. And even if Cuba drops out like almost always, USA, MEX and DOM are still better than Uruguay or whoever is 4th in the south.

Yet both were eliminated despite the upsets.

Rank Flag #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 

This was a bit predictable. Real Madrid has been looking clueless last few weeks and has a disaster winning rate when Ramos doesn't play. I say it in every page but Ajax has solid players in all lines and very developed gameplan.

The thing is, if we just do that "bonus for correct guesses" and no other change, then these users wouldn't change their strategy. I mean, probably they would care more about getting most of the bets right, but the strategy of betting only 10s and 1s would be untouched. There would be like two paralel games, one in which you try to guess as many bets as possible and another in which you try to win only your 10 point bets. We have to make changes to the point distribution itself, otherwise that strategy will still be the dominant one. As for deducting points, Dunadan already showed it wouldn't have any real effect (well, at least with the way I proposed, there could be other variants that make it work more efficently).

Yeah, go ahead with that. Also, is the next one for Tokyo or earlier?

No, there was one for London in the old forum. It was organized by quasit, he created the rules we still use to this day.

That is a rule already, you can't bet 0 points in a question.

First, I didn't participe in this one or in the Pyeongchang one. So I'm not "crying" because I had no dog in this. I'm just trying to help figure out a system that makes the biggest number of bets count, because that way the contest is more entertaining in my very personal opinion (though I think most users will agree with me on that point). I don't care if you or Dunadan win them from here to the end of time, that is not the issue. You are not the only two trying that strategy anyway. Second, I organized 2 of them. So I saw everyone's posts back then and of course I know what you've been doing. Also, because you've been very outspoken about your strategy since day 1. Not exactly a secret.

Are you suggesting that maybe the thing is that there are more "easy" bets than there should be? Or maybe putting a limit to the 10 and 9-pointers that can be placed would balance things better?

No, both had the same system as this one.

Last year I thought we had to spice things up and have a "lost bet, points deduction" kind of system. Like, right now the system is: you're given x maximum points to distribute and when you lose a bet you only lose points from that maximum of points. What I had in mind was: you're given x points to distribute and when you lose a bet you lose points from the total points you earned with the bets you won. This way people will think twice before throwing 10s around without considering much consequences. It's a good strategy but breaks the spirit of the contest in a sense. Obviously, with this alternative system I would give a lot more points to initially distribute so very different strategies can take shape ("high risk, high pay" vs "conservative distribution", etc). I was already thinking about it for Pyongyang but I had to make that bet contest quickly so I couldn't give shape to it. Also, I'm not exactly a mathematics genious so I could be terribly wrong in my ideas. But now we have wumo taking over this, so I'm sure he will come up with a better points system

Chile won against France in the classification matches my worry is not going down anytime soon. Semifinals tomorrow: USA-NZ, Arg-Samoa

Damn, has Elgendy ever lost anything? This is some Bolt/Ledecky level stuff.

Las Vegas sevens is on and Chile tied South Africa Chile has been improving a lot in sevens lately, in january they defeated a mixed A/B team of us in a tournament of lower importance. I'm starting to feel insecurities about olympic qualification, sevens can be random at times.

It's amazing how bad we are in badminton, there is no other sport in which we are nearly as bad as this one.

Yes, but it wasn't explicit restriction, africans and asians were just placed in the same pot. We still got Puerto Rico for example. I think this time it could be "no more than 2 from the same continent" or something. Otherwise there won't be much to draw past a certain point, but who knows...

I'm not so sure there will be total continental separation for anyone that isn't europe. That's more of a FIFA thing. Or is there some oficial statement?

Yeah, Cameroon could have been a force at the world cup with Pascal Siakam and Joel Embiid. A real pity.

Montenegro qualified. Latvia was very close. One of their players scored a silly double when they only needed 3 near the end. There was no hurry either as they had plenty possession time left.

I think it's not a random circumstance that Iñárritu and Del Toro films won it when they were in english and this one didn't.

It was easy to predict best picture. No way a foreign language film would win it.

I mean, if you land in a group with Argentina and Brazil that would be the best thing that could happen to Canada, with the olympics in perspective. I know it will probably be not possible due to rules or sth though.