THE CFL MINI POOLS
RULES! INSTRUCTIONS! INFORMATION!
Here it is, the MASTER CFL pool rules document. It covers all the CFL pools. So check it out!
ENTRY FORMS: Well, the entry form is basically the same as in the curling pools. They all use the new format of Pool forms. The entry sheet is a fancy new Excel form which is way easy to fill out on the computer. It has drop-down everything except where you put your name and contact info! But you can still print it off and fill it out by hand if that’s the way you like to do it. Credit for the original entry form goes to a guy at MTS.
NAME AND CONTACT INFO: Put your name as you would like to see it in the pool. You can use your actual name, or an alias. But I must know who people are, and if you win under an alias I do have to give away your real name. You may also put your phone number on here, in case I need to contact you. As well you may put your email address, for the same reason. If you do put your email address, I will assume you want emailed updates. If you don’t, just put a note saying “no emailed updates”. Or just leave the email box empty and I won’t email you in that case.
POOL DATES: Each pool specifies what dates the pool covers. CFL Pool 1 covers the first 6 or 7 weeks of the season, whatever is 24 games. Usually the end of June to early August; Pool 2 covers the next 6 or 7 weeks of the season, again whatever makes the next 24 games. Usually early August to later September. Finally, Pool 3 covers the remaining 24 games of the regular season, plus the 5 post season games, all the way to the Grey Cup! That’s usually later September right to Grey Cup Sunday in late November! See each entry form for the dates.
ENTRY FEE: The pool entry fee is also noted on the Entry Form. It’s usually $2.00. It is appreciated that you pay your entry fee at the time you enter the pool, or as soon as you see me after sending in an entry, or even before. All entries should be paid before the start of the pool, unless you have an arrangement with me. If it appears to me that a person doesn’t seem to care whether they pay for their entry in a pool, then I think it’s fair that such a person’s entry can be removed from the pool, and the person can be barred from future pools. If you can make the effort to enter, you should likewise make the effort to pay. It’s only fair, I think!
SUBMITTING YOUR ENTRY: Once you have filled out your form, find whatever way you can to get me your picks. If you fill out the entry form online, you MUST save it on your computer, and then email it to me as an attachment. If you’ve printed off the form and filled it out by hand, you must hand it in or mail it to me; or, you can fill it out or just type your picks into and email, and send them to glenmoor@shaw.ca. Any way you can get your entry or entries in is fine. At the Pool Kickoff Party even! Or, you may even phone in your picks, if I’m home (582-3028).
NUMBER OF ENTRIES: You may submit as many entries as you like. As long as you pay for them! This has always been allowed in all the pools, I just never really came right out and said it.
PREPAYMENT OF ENTRY FEES: If you’re a person who’s probably going to be going in every pool in a pool season, please consider paying for all the pools at once. Each CFL pool season has 3 pools, as noted above. That’s $6.00 for 3 pools. So rather than having to pay $2 every 6 weeks through the summer, when we all may be on vacation, who knows, just pay all at once! Then if you win, you can collect any time, or hang in there til the last pool of the season, and collect all your winnings at once also! And as many people do, leave enough “ON TAB” for the following CFL pool season. Or the curling pools if you’re into those. Lots of people do that. I keep track of all money on a balance sheet, I won’t forget. (Ask anyone who hasn’t played for 4 years and still has a balance!) And if you change your mind and want to drop out of the pools, that’s fine, I’ll pay out your balance. It’s your money, after all!
LONG DISTANCE ENTRIES: Many people in the pools are from outside Winnipeg, some of them I’ve never met! But they are able to play because they send in their entry fees by mail, or through a person that I may be in contact with. In this case, it’s especially good to pay all at once, at the start of the pool season, by mail. And that’s what these people do. Sure, a stamp is 57 cents (or so). But hey look at all the fun you get! And if you are an out-of-towner and you win, if you want, at the end of the season I will mail you a cheque for your winnings. I don’t mind paying for a stamp. Oh by the way it’s best NOT to send cash in the mail, as they say. A cheque is best!
ENTRY DEADLINE: This will be the exact time of day that the pool starts. Usually it’s the time of the first game of the pool. Each entry form will say when its deadline is. The deadline is the time you must get your entry and your payment in by. If emailing, your entry must be in my inbox by the deadline.
CHANGING YOUR ENTRY: If you’ve entered the pool already but want to change your entry, you may change it any time before the entry deadline. Say your favorite quarterback has gone down to injury, or whatever. Yes you can change it, it’s your entry. Until the deadline, that is!
LATE ENTRIES: You can miss the deadline, but not by much, in order to enter without any penalty! As long as the first game of the pool has not completed, or is still very early on and the outcome does not appear to be clear. It will be up to my discretion whether a late entry will be accepted, based on the above criteria. So if you happen to be late, give it a try and I’ll have a look to see how things are progressing in the actual event.
LATE ENTRY PENALTIES: If you enter after games are completed, or an outcome is clear, penalties can be applied, again at my discretion. Entries accepted after this time will be charged penalties as follows: For each game that is completed, well underway, or the outcome is obvious (as judged by me), these will become your top, then 2nd highest point games, etc., and you lose those points. If yours happens to be a late entry, what happens is I will take the first game, switch the points you have on it with whatever your top point game is, and then this first game does not count. This will also be done for the second game and your second-highest point game, and then this second game does not count. And so on. I think this is fair to everyone else, and hopefully won’t apply to anybody anyway! But if you’re going to be penalized, you may as well make the completed games your top point games, so you don’t get stuck with high points on some crappy matchup!
FILLING OUT THE ENTRY FORM IN DETAIL: It’s your choice if you want to use the online Excel entry form, where you just click to select all the teams, winners, and points, OR if you want to print it out and do it with pen or pencil. If you do use paper entries, make sure your picks are legible, if you could, that makes things easier all round.
REGULAR SEASON GAMES: Select the winner, or “tie game”, for each game on the form. There’s usually 24 regular season games on a pool. These are ALL the games in the CFL schedule! No game is missed. Unlike the curling pools!
PLAYOFF GAMES: The last pool of the season includes ALL the post-season games. That’s 5 extra games, so it has 29 games altogether. For the East and West semi-final, final, and the Grey Cup games, select the teams you think will play in these games, and then pick the winners of these games. No ties are allowed in the playoffs. The losers are important too, for bonus points in the semi-final, final, and Grey Cup games! So make sure to pick four different teams in the two semi-final games, four different teams for the East and West finals, and two teams for the Grey Cup game. Note, the playoff games are NOT interchangeable, so you have to predict the teams in the EXACT playoff game they play in to get full points! BUT, if you place a team in one semifinal and they actually play in the other semifinal (i.e. the CROSS-OVER rule), you still get one quarter of your points for that. (See “Bonus Points” later in the document!)
ASSIGN RANK POINTS: Assign ranking points to each game on the pool. The ranking points are listed down the RIGHT side of the form. Use each number only once. Use the HIGHEST points for the games you are MOST sure of; and use the LOWEST points for the games you are LEAST sure of. Make sure you assign rank points to all games on the form.
TIE GAMES: If you successfully predict a TIE game, you get DOUBLE the ranking points you assigned. (A “TIE” is where the two teams end up with exactly the same score.) BUT note that there hasn’t been a tie in the CFL since 2009! And two ties in 2007, and one in 2004. So keep that in mind!
FILLING OUT THE ENTRY FORM CORRECTLY: You are responsible for filling out the sheet correctly. If errors are not noticed until it is too late, appropriate action must be taken that is fair to other entrants, which means you may lose points. However I always contact people if corrections are required! So if you goofed up something, you can expect an email or call from me!
TEAM INFORMATION: For each pool, if you need help, you’ll have to visit www.cfl.ca or somewhere else to see how teams have done before. The first pool of the year is probably the toughest since we only have last year’s results to go on, and who knows which players have moved where, or retired, or what!
WINNING THE POOL: The person with the most points at the end of the pool is the winner! And those that are 2nd and 3rd usually also win prizes, depending on the number of entries in the pool. For details see the “PRIZE DISTRIBUTION” section! Coming up… now!!
PRIZE DISTRIBUTION: Here’s the details of pool prize distribution. ALL entry money collected is paid out in prizes. In the event of ties, money is distributed evenly between the tied people. And the number of winners will always match the number of top prizes, unless someone is tied for the lowest top prize, in which case there will be more winners. Some examples of ties: Say two people are tied for first. In this case the top two people split the 1st and 2nd place prizes equally. So if there are only 3 prizes as in the table below, these people each get 40% of the prize pool – 50% plus 30%, divided by two. Then the person with the next highest points to them takes the 3rd place prize. And if there’s, say, 4 prizes, only 4 people will win prize money, unless anyone else is tied for 4th, in which case extra people will win money! I.E. if there’s a 3-way tie for 4th, then they split the 4th place prize evenly. Not much eh! But you still get the prestige of being a winner! And all others will be in awe of you. Notice the new scheme, for 57 or more entries there will be SIX prizes now. Share the wealth, I say! Here’s the table of prizes then!
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Number of Entries: |
Prizes: |
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1 – 3 |
1st = 100% (Winner take all!) |
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4 – 9 |
1st = 60%, 2nd = 40% |
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10 – 19 |
1st = 50%, 2nd = 30%, 3rd = 20% |
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20 – 39 |
1st = 50%, 2nd = 25%, 3rd = 15%, 4th = 10% |
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21 or more |
All pools with 21 entries or more will have a last place prize of $2.00! Which is taken from the full prize pool BEFORE the percentages are applied. |
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40 – 56 |
1st = 45%, 2nd = 25%, 3rd = 15%, 4th = 10%, 5th = 5% |
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57 or more |
1st = 40%, 2nd = 22.5%, 3rd = 15%, 4th = 10%, 5th = 7.5%, 6th = 5% |
ACCOUNTABILITY: It may be interesting to note: Once all the entries are in and the pools are underway, everyone’s picks are available in the master spreadsheet, for everyone to see. You can see yours and if you notice an entry error please do not hesitate to let me know! But also, anyone could conceivably act as watchdog, and ensure that all the picks published at the start of the pool are unchanged by the end of the pool. So you can verify that your own picks have been entered correctly, but also you can be confident there are no shenanigans going on in the pools! Having said that, sometimes I do have to get clarification from people, if some of their picks are blank or not clear, so I may have to do corrections from time to time. But only if there is no unfair advantage in doing the correction. At some point in the pool, all picks would have to remain as entered. So everything is transparent, nothing is hidden.
PLAYOFF BONUS POINTS: Okay so, as I said before, even if you don’t pick the correct winners in the semi-final, final, and Grey Cup games, you still get bonus points for picking the right teams to play and win and/or lose these games. Or for placing them in the wrong game. So we have two semi-final games which have 4 different teams participating in them; two final games which have 4 different teams; and the Grey Cup final with 2 different teams. So what you do is pick all the different teams for each of these groups:
1. EAST AND WEST SEMI-FINAL GAMES: In each division, the second place team plays the third place team. So we need 4 different teams here. You must select the winner of the EXACT semi-final game to get full points. Then, for each team you put in the correct semi-final match, but didn’t win, you get ½ your points. And finally, for each team you place in the wrong semi-final match, you still get ¼ of your points for putting them in the playoffs. (This can happen with CFL playoff “cross overs” (see just below). Note though you can only score once for each team!
2. EAST AND WEST FINAL GAMES: Same as above, except based on the two final games. You must pick the winner of the EXACT final game to get full points. And of course you can only score once for each team.
3. THE GREY CUP FINAL GAME: Here you pick two different teams, and can only score full points on the team you picked to win. But still get ½ points for each team you correctly place in the Cup final. Again only scoring once for each team.
THE CFL PLAYOFFS CROSSOVER RULE: A team who is in 4th Place in their division can “cross over” to the other division and play in their semifinal game IF they have more points than the other division’s 3rd place team! So, in 2008, Toronto was 3rd in the East with 4 wins for 8 points, but Edmonton was 4th Place in the West with 10 wins for 20 points! So Edmonton took Toronto’s place in the East playoffs! So yes, it does happen! Now, in the above case if you had picked Edmonton to play in the West’s semifinal and/or final, unfortunately the most you could score is ¼ of your assigned points for them, since you didn’t pick them to play in the East playoff games! To score full or ½ points for a team that has crossed over, you must have placed them in that exact game. BUT if you had Edmonton to win the Grey Cup and they actually made it through the East semifinal and final games to the cup, you would of course receive your full points for them if they won the Cup. It don’t matter how a team gets to the Cup, if you pick them to win it and they do, you get your points!
Use these sample hypothetical results for the following POINT SCORING EXAMPLES:
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West Semifinal: Calgary beats Hamilton (Crossover!) East Semifinal: Winnipeg beats Toronto (yeah!) |
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West Final: Edmonton beats Calgary East Final: Winnipeg beats Montreal (OH yeah!) |
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GREY CUP GAME: Winnipeg beats Edmonton |
Example 1: You picked Calgary to beat B.C. in the West Semifinal for 15 points. Obviously you get 15 points for Calgary, but none for B.C. coz they weren’t in the semifinals.
Example 2: You picked B.C. to beat Edmonton in the West Semifinal for 12 points. Since neither team was in any semifinal game, you don’t get any points at all.
Example 3: You picked Hamilton to beat Winnipeg in the East Semifinal for 17 points. Well you get ½ your 17 points for correctly placing Winnipeg in the semifinal. But since Hamilton crossed over into the West Semifinal, you score ¼ of your 17 points, since they were in the other semifinal. So, you get ½ of 17 points which is 8 and ½ points, or 8.5 points (no rounding), plus ¼ of 17 points which is 4 and ¼ points, or 4.25 points, so that’s a total of 12 and ¾ or 12.75 points you receive for your pick! Note it doesn’t matter that you picked Hamilton to win the EAST Semifinal, and they won the WEST semifinal, you only get just ¼ points for that coz they were in the WRONG semifinal.
Ideal example: You amazingly predicted Hamilton’s crossing over to the west, and also ALL the playoff games correctly! Including the Grey Cup! If you did that, you would get 1 and ½ times your point assignments for each game! That’s a full 50% bonus on each game, man! So say you put 10, 12, 14, 16, and 20 on the 5 post-season games, you’d get 15 + 18 + 21 + 24 + 30 or 108 points for those games! Instead of just 72 points. See, that’s the power of the playoff bonus points in action!
ENOUGH ALREADY, GO GET THE ENTRY FORM, AND GOOD LUCK NOW! Thanks for playing! And if you have any questions please contact me somehow! Contact info above!!