LDOG

Finally reaches top of the table. Hopefully to never let it go until the end. Now there are three relatively easy fixtures coming: vs (away), (away) and (home). We need 9/9 or 7/9 and Russia will be almost there.

The road to India/England 2018 has started a while ago (before the olympics actually) with the early rounds of FIH world league. Currently the first european stages are underway. Lots of debutants in both gentlemen and ladies, especially from Asia. The most "exotic" additions seem to be on the men's side: Some of them never before I had even seen playing this sport.

It's the same as those fake north korea news during the world cup...

Well, some countries have been qualifying teams for CL since forever and their leagues haven't got much better in level (Greece, Turkey, Russia, Switzerland, Netherlands). The only country that increased the level of their league over the last 20 years is Portugal I would say... and Ukraine, but in a lower scale. I think other factors are more important than CL money.... economy of the country, level of investment in football, etc

I like this new format, right now there are too many punching bags in CL.

No, 248.

Ok, @konig what do you think about my predictions? I think I guessed most correctly I know argentine mentality too well The only thing I missed badly was the tennis. I knew Del Potro has the tennis to beat anyone but I think he was helped a lot by the crowd during games. It was like his body was telling him, whenever he was about to lose a set or a game: "you can't give up, you have to win for them". If this tournament had been played anywhere else he would have lost in first round. Other than that, I had many 100% guesses (athletics, fencing, wrestling, Judo, Golf, Rowing, Cycling Road, Rugby, Basketball, Volleyball, Gymnastics, Triathlon). Then other sports in which I had accurate guesses but not 100%: - I knew Grabich would do bad, but I didn't expect everyone else to also be terrible. - in Sailing I predicted one medal and 4 medal races and that was exactly the case, but I didn't expect 49er FX and 470 to be the ones to do SO BAD whilst Finn and Laser did well. - Football was a 50/50 gamble and it went to the disaster side. - In shooting I got the Gil performance the opposite way. Once again Federico does bad in multi-sport games while his sister does well. Still, this sport is (when you reach a certain level) all luck. - Handball: our women's team did just as I expected, but our men's team played surprisingly well without Simonet and even won a match. Good for them. - Boxing: just as I predicted Melian and Peralta lost in QF. However I wasn't expecting all the others to be SO weak. - Equestrian: the good performance was in individual and not in team as I expected. Then there is the special case of Hockey.... I knew our guys could win a medal (I have known that for a long time) since we have the best coach and the best corner in the world, but I wasn't expecting a gold, of course (mostly because I never expected Australia to do that bad). Now the women's team.... what can I say? I had a bad feeling the weeks before the olympics because of the many injuries and the bad preparation schedule (play 7 friendlies one week before the start and fly to Rio just 2 days before the ceremony). Also I saw that the girls did not seem to be very focused in the competition... too many social media stuff, attending the ceremony while they had to play the following day, too many young girls in the squad and lacking a captain with strong personality like Aymar, etc. I thought however that even all that was going to be enough for a bronze in the worst case, but seems not. Also, I don't like the coach (to me he is like the Julio Lamas of hockey, respected coach but very overrated in my opinion). I'm pretty sure we are going to win the women's Junior WC later this year (or at least play the final), so we should have a very strong team for 2020. But I hope the management of the team is handled better in the future (and hopefully without any "Aníbal Fernández" inside the federation). Now... Buenos Aires 2018. I hope we have a good performance and I wonder in which sport(s) will we see an exciting young promise.

The logo for the Luge section in the front page is wrong.

Yes, I told him that day to put points in the bets, then he edited but apparently had this excess. Obviously I was busy with opening all the other contests that day and didn't have time to count the points of all the participants.

I counted your points anyway and your total is 229. At least you didn't miss a medal because of this.

Excess of points: 32x10 = 320 120 - 32 = 88 320 + 88 = 408 I'm sorry, but I didn't realize this before so I could tell you to edit

Well, we didn't conceive this game for people to only bet 10s and 1s. I mean, it worked for you anyway, but you could have placed that extra point in any of the ones you left with 1 to make it a 2 (imagine if you had lost by 1 point ).

Final Standing available here. Dunadan OlympicsFan De_Gambassi Our Olympic Betting Champion is none other than OlympicsFan, who with a bold betting strategy of only placing 10s and 1s managed to top the tables while winning 75 bets in the process. Silver is for enigmatic Dunadan, who seems to have pretty good knowledge of sports from what I have seen, despite he doesn't post much. Dunadan also was the user that guessed the most bets (78) and could have won the contest if only one more american nation had been able to win a medal in Rio (the count stopped at 14...). Bronze for De_Gambassi, who was 2nd in number of bets won (77). Honorable mentions to heywoodu, a betting fanatic who got 4th place and collaborated a lot to make this contest possible.

Final Standing Rank User Nation Total TB (bets won) 1 OlympicsFan 291 2 Dunadan 288 3 De_Gambassi 282 4 heywoodu 276 5 Forzazzurri 269 6 LDOG 266 7 dcro 259 8 vinipereira 257 9 Hawkeye 251 10 Crolympic 250 11 suchyy7 248 75 12 valtellina 248 69 13 uk12points 247 69 14 teamgb supporter 247 68 15 Akin Baddy 243 16 KhanBeaver 241 17 Walter Egow 240 69 18 See-ya 240 65 19 Henry_Leon 237 72 20 Runfixe 237 67 21 Vinicius Vaz 236 72 22 gubchandrolai 236 68 23 Otilio 232 69 24 MCMXC 232 68 25 Federer91 230 26 zob79 229 67 27 wpwells 229 64 28 hckosice 228 66 29 Griff88 228 65 30 amiry2j 227 73 31 Bohemia 227 66 32 mrv86 224 33 varnoldr 220 64 34 Harsh Shah 220 63 35 juliosilva 214 65 36 justony 214 62 37 dezbee2008 212 38 kungshamra71 210 62 39 Dmitry 210 59 40 rybak 207 61 41 pjwasz 207 58 42 SteveParker 206 43 monte88 205 44 Vojthas 202 45 bestmen 193 46 hoversaBR 191 47 Mark Chan 173 48 irmants 163 49 Finnator123 153 50 Frodders 131 Mistakes are always possible. If you have any complaint, please PM me.

But at the world cup there are weak teams to rest players, in your format of 8 teams in which only 1 qualifies for final there are no possible "rest games" you have to play every match to the max or you lose. Rugby is very competitive among the top 10 teams, if let's say New Zealand doesn't play with their best team, they can lose to Scotland, for example.

Because almost all teams play with substitutes in at least one match during group stage.... Argentina and New Zealand for example played substitutes vs Namibia, Ireland and France did vs Romania, etc

No, that's impossible. No professional rugby team can take that. You can have two games between 5 days rest maybe ONE time, but 3 times in a row will end with more than half of the team injured. And believe me, rugby players get injured A LOT. Even in regular club championships were they play once per week it's very common to rotate a bunch of players each match because many are injured.

It's impossible to have a serious rugby union event in the span of two weeks. Players need at least 6/7 days of rest between matches. In world cups there is even controversy when some teams are given "only" 4 or 5 days of rest between fixtures. During the olympics each team could play 3 matches max, which is not enough for any serious format of competition.

I think a team sport only can be replaced by another team sport and since Baseball has been included again (although not in very acceptable conditions), I don't see any other one with the strenght to enter the program. What is a no no for me is adding team events of individual sports, the only purpose that always has is to gift more medals to strong nations.

List of Answers complete About bet number 1: Moldova's Canoeing medal hasn't been officially stripped yet, so I'm counting it for the total of nations (in the rules it was established that the answer would be set as of today). About bet number 65: I'm aware two riders fell during the Women's Final, but they didn't crash into each other (which I said was the condition to be fulfilled), so the answer remains a NO. If you see any mistakes in the answers, do tell me, I'm human after all. Results will be out in a few days, please be patient.

You forgot: 1 Australia, New Zealand, Argentina Also for some reason you don't count beach volleyball.

Out Weightlifting, men's Football. In Futsal, more events for Karate/Climbing, more teams for Baseball/Softball

Tomorrow.... olympic hangover.... the worst feeling in the world. I hope IOC uploads all the events in YouTube, otherwise I won't have anything to do until the end of the year.

This... is a really good segment.

All within my expectations, the same number as London and in almost the same sports, but better quality. Next objectives: do well in YOG 2018 and never again decrease from this number