Who Will Win Series 68? (Spoilers of Recent Events Included)

[Jordan F]

As always with these topics, spoilers of recent events are included in this topic, so view at your own risk.

It's that time again, time to pick the winner of the series. Because Glen Webb only won 7 games in this series, he will carry over into Series 69, and those who were on the leaderboard already will go through to the series finals.

"But wait Jordan F, why do the options look different than they're supposed to?" Good question, obligatory audience member. Rachael Moran, who would have been the #5 seed, could not make the finals because of personal reasons. What that means is that Sam, Jill, and Chris all move up one seed, and taking Rachael's place in the finals as the number 8 seed will be the person who finished 9th overall, apterite Peter Fenton. The match-ups will now go as follows, according to the Wiki's listings of airdates:

Friday, June 14th: # 1 Seed Giles Hutchings vs #8 Seed Peter Fenton
Monday June 17th: #2 Seed Andy Platt vs #7 Seed Chris Ball
Monday June 24th: #3 Seed Eileen Taylor vs #6 Seed Jill Hayward (in a rematch of their prelim game)
Tuesday June 25th: #4 Seed Joe McGonigle vs #5 Seed Sam McElhinney
Wednesday June 26th: Winner of Game 1 vs Winner of Game 2
Thursday June 27th: Winner of Game 3 vs Winner of Game 4
Friday June 28th: Grand Final

With all that being said, who wins it? Vote here.

[Andy Platt]

Interesting that I got a couple more votes since today's episode - I think round 10 in today's game might be behind that.
Still hopelessly lagging behind though

Edit: I reckon this thread should be in the spoiler forum (?)

[Ian Fitzpatrick]

Interesting that I got a couple more votes since today's episode - I think round 10 in today's game might be behind that.
Still hopelessly lagging behind though

Edit: I reckon this thread should be in the spoiler forum (?)

I voted for you Andy and I haven't seen that episode yet, I'm about a week behind due to holidays etc. I agree it should be in the Spoilers section.

[Jack Worsley]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSOSAHU2CLY

[Thomas Carey]

I think Eileen will lose her final vs Giles, after beating Chris Ball in the semis...

[Andy Platt]

Lol, I voted Eileen as well.

I didn't expect Giles to be quite so far ahead to be honest (I was 4 maxes behind him over 8 games with tougher selections, am winning our H2H in the new format online, etc) but the public has spoken lol.

[Gavin Chipper]

Lol, I voted Eileen as well.

I didn't expect Giles to be quite so far ahead to be honest (I was 4 maxes behind him over 8 games with tougher selections, am winning our H2H in the new format online, etc) but the public has spoken lol.

But that's a result of the all or nothing voting system. Ask people which is the highest number out of 100, 99.9, 4, 3, 2, 1 and they'll all go for 100. All those people who went for Giles probably thought it would be close but that's not reflected in this.

[Adam Gillard]

Giles can't lose on the letters rounds because he ultimately decides whether or not a word is in the dictionary. This, coupled with his conundrum speed and his clearly having given a bung to CECIL, means that he is virtually unbeatable.

[Anthony Endsor]

Well my vote goes to Andy. The reason being, although I expect it to be close and yes Giles did score better overall, I felt Andy had a slightly tougher path to the Quarter Finals and overcame better opposition, hence his lower scores. I also felt at times the letters may have been kinder to Giles, so he would score higher.
My feeling is, if Andy and Giles meet in the final, Andy will be more capable of holding his nerve and come out on top.
We shall see.

[Martin Long]

Giles can't lose on the letters rounds because he ultimately decides whether or not a word is in the dictionary. This, coupled with his conundrum speed and his clearly having given a bung to CECIL, means that he is virtually unbeatable.

[Andy Platt]

Well my vote goes to Andy. The reason being, although I expect it to be close and yes Giles did score better overall, I felt Andy had a slightly tougher path to the Quarter Finals and overcame better opposition, hence his lower scores.

... the combined score of (Andy's) opponents in the 8 preliminary games is the lowest in Countdown history, which is 324.

I also felt at times the letters may have been kinder to Giles, so he would score higher.

Maybe I have a different view but I felt it was actually the letters that were more even between our runs, but I got a bit of a bum deal on some numbers and conundrums

[Anthony Endsor]

Well my vote goes to Andy. The reason being, although I expect it to be close and yes Giles did score better overall, I felt Andy had a slightly tougher path to the Quarter Finals and overcame better opposition, hence his lower scores.

... the combined score of (Andy's) opponents in the 8 preliminary games is the lowest in Countdown history, which is 324.

I also felt at times the letters may have been kinder to Giles, so he would score higher.

Maybe I have a different view but I felt it was actually the letters that were more even between our runs, but I got a bit of a bum deal on some numbers and conundrums

Oh yes, there was one conundrum in particular which proved awkward in your run Andy, the famous AMBERGRIS. I was in the audience for that game as well.
Maybe it was just me, but in playing along with every game, I tended to do a lot better against Giles than against you somehow. It seemed that in Giles' games there was more flow with the letters and higher possible scores, whereas in your games a lot of rounds were won with obscure words. In many games I would have done little better than your opponents. In Giles' games I would have beaten most of them by a fair margin.
It was that level of obscurity, and the ability to wipe opponents out as such, which I felt gave you the edge.

[Peter Fenton]

I also felt at times the letters may have been kinder to Giles, so he would score higher.

Maybe I have a different view but I felt it was actually the letters that were more even between our runs, but I got a bit of a bum deal on some numbers and conundrums

If you use Apterous difficulty ratings for conundrums, then Andy had a combined total of 50 out of 80, whereas Giles only had 25 from 70 (SANITIZED doesn't have a rating) so that seems to be a fair assessment in terms of conundrums. For numbers, you could work out the average difficulty rating for each solvable numbers game using this site but I can't be bothered to do that. Obviously Andy's numbers games were more difficult as he picked 4L, so that makes it more difficult to compare on an equal basis.

In terms of overall performance stats, Giles edges it. He got 965 points out of a possible 1094 (88.2%) and Andy got 889 out of 1036 (85.8%).

In terms of maxes, I make it that Giles got 94 out of 120 (78.3 % and 11.75 maxes per game) and Andy got 87 out of 120 (72.5% and 10.88 maxes per game).

Of course, you should probably take into account the fact that Andy's games were over different formats. Had Andy done all his games in the new format, he'd be a little bit closer in terms of stats.

If I were a bookmaker, based on these stats I'd be offering something like 4/7 Giles and 5/4 Andy IF they were both to reach the final.

[Andy Platt]

Seems about right.

Giles got 92 and I got 88 if I recall, though.

[Peter Fenton]

OK, not too far out then. I wasn't sure whether to count a max when you get 7 points for an impossible numbers but it is possible to get closer. Giles did this a couple of times and I counted them as maxes.