After a few betting games on the outcomes of finals with various success rates, and when people can’t actually be sure that someone hasn’t found out a result on the sly, I thought I’d introduce one in advance for you to all have your say on the upcoming CoC. I’ve come up with a format. Unless there is a huge mega hole that I haven’t noticed, I won’t be changing it for your “better” idea, just go with it or don’t.
Here’s how it will work:
We now know the structure for the upcoming CoC – you can plot it through from start to finish with your predictions, but can you get the results right in the process? And furthermore, can you hedge your bets?
For R1, you know who will play who. Simply predict who will win. Each correct answer scores 50 points. Each wrong answer scores 0. You must also predict a margin. The margin points are a bit more complicated, but go with me. If you are 10 points exactly out on the margin, that is exactly 0 points. For each point closer you the points added increases by 1. That’s terribly worded, so I’ll write it out manually. 9 points away = 1 point, 8 points away = 3 points, 7 points away = 6 points, 6 points away = 10 points, up to an exact prediction which earns 55 points – meaning you can score up to 105 points per game.
For being further out than 10, for every point further away between 11 and 40, you lose 1 point, meaning if you were 40 points out on the margin you lose 30 points. After that, each further point you are away, you lose 2 points.
If you predict the wrong winner you can still collect margin points, or more likely, you will still lose margin points. In the event of a tie-break conundrum, this will be taken to be a 0 point win. If you were to predict this for the wrong player, you would still get 55 margin points, cos it’d be a ballsy pick.
From R2 onwards, obviously we don’t the players who will be involved, but you must continue to make predictions based on the results you’ve predicted to date. For instance if you have backed Paul to beat me, and Stephen to beat Tom, you are now predicting Paul v Stephen.
If both players turn out to be involved in that game, perfect.
If only one player is involved in it, then the outcome will still be measured from the perspective of the prediction you made. For instance, if you predict Stephen will beat Paul by 20 points, but he ends up playing Tom – you are still predicting Tom to beat Paul by 20 points. Therefore you may wish to hedge your bets on outcomes where you’re unsure what will happen.
If you have no players involved in a game, your score for that game is automatically a flat -75
If you don’t understand the scoring system... you don’t massively need to – you can just send me your predictions including margins to me privately, and I’ll just work out your scores. Otherwise, you may wish to work out some convoluted tactic to optimise your chances of winning.
You have until the start of the 1st game of CoC FILMS (October 1st) to get your predictions in. Please don’t worry about telling me that you think Paul will beat me – I won’t take it personally! I will be taking part myself and will be sending my predictions to a player who has already made their own. For this reason, no alterations can be made to your predictions once you have sent them in. Be sure before you click send.
Results will be revealed on a day by day basis as they air. No pressure will be placed on anyone (barring me) through finding out what people think

Best of luck!