THE GLEN POOLS
MASTER RULES DOC
RULES! INSTRUCTIONS! INFORMATION!
For all curling, football, soccer, weather, etc.
pools!
Here
it is, the MASTER pool rules document.
It covers all my pools that are based on curling, CFL football, soccer,
etc. events, and occasionally a weather pool! Where you pick the results of a
whole bunch of games, ie.
round robin games, regular season games, and then predict the playoffs and
finals, for these events, and add rank points to all your picks. Weather pools are slightly different, you’re
predicting weather over a period of days, no playoffs there, or rank points. This
document will mostly stay generic, sticking to rules re
entry fees, prizes, mostly, but sometimes diving into specifics for some
types of pools. So check it out!
ENTRY FORMS:
Well, the entry form is basically the same for each
pool. They all use the new format of
Pool forms. The entry sheet is a fancy
new Excel form which is way easier to fill out on 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 will 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 NAME AND DATES:
Each pool specifies what event it is for (ie. 2010 Brier, 2009 Olympic Trials, CFL Football, World
Cup Soccer, etc.). Then it has the dates
that the event, and likewise the pool, runs.
ENTRY FEE:
The pool entry fee is also noted on the Entry
Form. Originally, for years, it was $2.00.
But a number of you suggested it go to $5.00.
More worth it. I did not want to
increase it. Enjoyed the small scale.
But, around 2016? I gave in, and upped it to
$5. And guess what, it was received very
well! The fees were now 2 and ½ times
larger, but so likewise, the prizes! So
no going back now!
FEE PAYMENT: 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 pre-pay your entries. 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 someone can make the effort to enter, they should likewise make an
equal effort to pay. It’s only fair, I
think! To me, and everyone!
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. Geez these days, you could take a picture of
your entry, and email or text it to me! Any way you can get your entry or entries
in is fine. You may even phone
in your picks, if I’m home, and you know my cell or land line number! Which I don’t
advertise too much, but if you know either, or would like to, let me know. Because however you get your entries in is
FINE! You could even call me and dictate
your picks over the phone!
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. Since there’s no guarantee any of your
entries will finish in the money! No
offense, just the odds.
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. In the past, a normal curling pool
season had 4 pools:
The Tournament of Hearts, the Brier, and the Men’s and Women’s
World Championships. That’s $8.00 for 4
pools. (Though the 2010 pool season had
SEVEN pools, and started in November of 2009! All those OLYMPIC pools.) Anyway, now the entry fee is $5.00, and
there’s only the Hearts and the Brier curling pools. But also, three CFL Football pools in the summer into fall! So
anyway, if you’re going to be in the pools, why not pay in advance, all at
once, and 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! Or leave enough “ON TAB” for the following
season. Or the CFL pool season. Lots of people do that. I keep track of all money on a balance sheet,
I won’t forget. 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 have been from outside
Winnipeg, some of them I’ve never met!
But they are able to play because they send in
their picks and entry fees by email. And since Covid, the lockdown, we’ve figured
out we can email and e-transfer easily!
So that makes things easy to spread all over the place. We even had a guy from B.C. who I never met,
but he saw the pool website once, and played for a
while! He even still sends out his own
FREE curling pools to those who are interested.
Fun! Though often I’m too busy
with my own pools to take the time to enter his. I try though!
ENTRY DEADLINE:
This is the exact time of day that the pool
starts. Usually
it’s the time of the first draw, or first game on the pool, but sometimes it’s
different. Each entry form will
say. 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.
LATE ENTRIES:
You can miss the deadline, but not by much, in order to enter without any penalty! As long as the first
draw in the event or on 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 some games are completed, or an outcome is clear, penalties can be applied, again at my discretion. I will not allow a late entry if I feel it
might give an unfair advantage.
Penalties would be forfeiting the already completed games, for a halfway
amount of points, ie. Top
points are 40? So
you would forfeit 20, 21, etc. Again, IF
I allow your late entry. OK doke? The bottom line
being fairness to those who got their entries in by
the deadline.
FILLING OUT THE ENTRY FORM IN DETAIL: Okay here we go! The actual
filling out of the form!
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, please, else I will have to contact you for
clarification! Thanks!
ROUND
ROBIN OR REGULAR SEASON GAMES: Select the
winner for each selected round robin or regular season game on the form. There’s usually about 20 to 25 of these in
any curling pool. These are not all the
games in the tournament; rather, these are carefully selected by me, hopefully
the more challenging games to predict. And
I usually try to include every participating team at least once or twice. Exception, the CFL Football pools. These are based on ALL GAMES of a CFL
season. Usually broken into THREE 7-week
pools, the final one 7 weeks PLUS the playoffs and the Grey Cup Final!
PICKING TIES: In the CFL Pool regular season games,
you select the winner, or TIE GAME for each game. Note, since 2025, if you correctly select a
TIE GAME, meaning tied after all overtime play, you receive TRIPLE your
assigned points for that game! For pools
of any other sport, if not specified, ties are worth only DOUBLE your assigned
points. It’s just the CFL pools where
ties are worth triple. Since they are
quite rare!
PLAYOFF GAMES: For both curling and football pools, select
teams you think will play in each playoff game, AND the winners of these games. And for any semifinal or final games. Specific details of the playoffs for any particular pool, (if any), will be explained in as much
detail as possible on the particular entry form. And of course, no ties are allowed in the
playoffs, for curling, football, or really, whatever sport. It’s the playoffs!!
INTERCHANGEABLE PLAYOFF PICKS. In
some cases, your picks on a pair of playoff games will be
interchangeable! Meaning, if you pick
two winners, but in the wrong order, you still get your full points! Example, the Page Playoff QUALIFIER games
used in Curling competitions since 2023.
These are interchangeable at the moment. However, once we get to the Page Playoffs,
here you must place teams, winners and losers, in the EXACT Page Playoff games
to get full or half points. Likewise in
the Bronze and Gold (Final) matches. But, you still get ¼ points for placing a team in the wrong
Playoff or Medal match. Also, you can have totally different teams in the playoff, semi-final, bronze and gold matches, it doesn’t
matter if these games don’t relate in any way.
This would be like covering all bases, if you aren’t totally sure who
will be in the playoff action. Totally
up to you! But you can’t put a team in
more than once, ie. Canada vs Canada for the semifinal or the
final, or even the page playoffs. You
must have two different teams playing in any game. And in the 1-2 and 3-4 playoffs, FOUR
different teams! No duplicating
here. The Excel entry form enforces this
for you, if you use that.
CFL
POOL PLAYOFF PICKS: In the CFL pools, you must place teams in
the EXACT semifinal or final to be able to receive your full points. Picking the winner of the EXACT semifinal or
final gets you your full point assignment; if you didn’t successfully pick the
winner, you still get half of your points for each team placed in the
EXACT semifinal or final. And, you still receive one quarter of your points for each
team you place in the WRONG semifinal or final!
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. Until all games have a ranking. The Excel entry form assists you by
eliminating a point assignment from the drop-down list once you use it. If you choose to do yours online.
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 usually have time to contact
people if corrections are required! Or
if I just can’t read your picks.
TEAM INFORMATION: For each pool, there is
always information on the participating teams.
In the Tournament of Hearts and the Brier, this information is on page 2
of the Pool Entry Form. For the World
Curling Pools, the info is on separate TEAMS documents. Either way, it’s information on how the teams
are doing this season, and/or how they’ve done before. Hopefully information that
will help you make your picks! I.E. the teams’ latest CTRS rankings are always
included on Page 2 of the Heats or Curling pool entry forms! As for the CFL Football pools, sorry, you’re
on your own there!
THE PAGE PLAYOFF SYSTEM IN CURLING
COMPETITIONS: This is the format most Curling
competitions use. In this system, the 1st
place team meets the 2nd place team, and the 3rd place
team meets the 4th place team.
The winner of 1 vs 2 goes directly to the final, or Gold
match; the loser gets a second chance against the winner of the 3 vs 4 game in
the Semi-Final. The winner of the
Semi-Final game goes to the Gold Medal game.
And the losers of the Semi and the 3 vs 4 playoff game get to fight it
out in the Bronze Medal game. (The
Bronze game is now part of the Tournament of Hearts and the Brier!) For a visual representation of this playoff system,
please see document Curling/Pics/PagePlayoffGuideFeb2015.jpg, designed by one of our
regular pool players!
ABBREVIATED PLAYOFF FORMATS:
Some
competitions, like the Olympic Trials, do not use the 1v2 3v4 playoffs. Instead, the top 3 round robin teams advance
to the playoffs: the 1st place team goes
straight to the final, and meets the winner of the
semi-final game between the 2nd and 3rd place teams! That’s it.
So no playoff ¼ point bonuses in these pools,
just ½ points. Competitions with
different formats will be noted on their entry forms!
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, dig this “PRIZE DISTRIBUTION”
section!
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!
|
Number of Entries: |
Prizes: |
|
1 – 3 |
1st = 100% (Absolutely
Amazing!) |
|
4 – 9 |
1st = 60%,
2nd = 40% |
|
10 – 19 |
1st = 50%,
2nd = 30%, 3rd = 20% |
|
20 – 39 |
1st = 50%,
2nd = 25%, 3rd = 15%, 4th = 10% |
|
21 or more |
All pools with 21 entries or more will have a last place prize of your money back! $5.00! Which is taken from the full
prize pool BEFORE the percentages are applied. |
|
40 – 56 |
1st = 45%,
2nd = 25%, 3rd = 15%, 4th = 10%, 5th
= 5% |
|
57 or more |
1st = 40%,
2nd = 22.5%, 3rd = 15%, 4th = 10%, 5th
= 7.5%, 6th = 5% |
ACCOUNTABILITY: 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, all the picks are published at the start of the pool! So 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 not clear, and I may have
to correct them from time to time. But
only if there is no unfair advantage in doing the
correction. And never
past say, the 2nd or 3rd day or week of a pool! By that time their picks would have to remain
as entered. I usually offer a reasonable
correction well before the pool starts, and if it’s too late, that correction
stays. As for accountability… My belief
is, you couldn’t run a crooked pool for long, people would always find out, and
trust would be broken, and no one would enter ever again. And good thing too!
PLAYOFF
BONUS POINTS: Okay so, as I said before,
even if you don’t pick the correct winners in the playoff,
semi-final, bronze and final games, you still get bonus points for picking the
right teams to play and win and/or lose these games. So we have two
playoff games which have 4 different teams participating in them;
a semi-final with two teams, and the bronze and final with 4 different
teams. So what
we do is pick all the different teams for each of these groups:
1.
PLAYOFF GAMES: The first place
team plays the 2nd place team, and the 3rd place team
plays the 4th place team. So we need 4
different teams here. NEW as of 2011: You must select the
winner of the EXACT page playoff game to get full points. Then, for each team you put in the EXACT playoff
match, but didn’t win, you get ½ your points.
And finally, for each team you place in the playoffs, in the wrong page playoff
game, you still get ¼ of your points for putting them in the playoffs. Note though you can only score once for each
team!
2.
SEMI-FINAL GAME: If you correctly pick the winner here,
of course you get your full points.
Then, for each team you put in the Semi-final that actually
plays in it, you get ½ of your points for each team. Of course you can only score once for each
team.
3.
THE BRONZE AND FINAL GAMES: Same as the playoffs, full points for picking
winners of the exact game; ½ points for each team that you place in the exact
game; and finally ¼ points for placing a team in the
wrong medal match.
Note
the above apply specifically to Curling Page Playoffs, but similar rules are
applied to CFL Football pools, or Soccer pools, etc. Specific details of playoff picking and
points are included with each pool’s entry form.
Use
these example hypothetical results for the following examples:
|
1 VS 2 PLAYOFF: TEAM 3 VS 4 PLAYOFF: |
|
SEMI-FINAL: |
|
BRONZE: ALBERTA BEATS
B.C. |
|
FINAL: TEAM |
Example 1: You picked Team
Example 2: You picked Team
Example 3: You picked Team
Example 4: All correct:
You picked
Alberta over B.C. in the Bronze for 16
points, and Team Canada over B.C. in the Final for 7 points. SO you receive your full 16 points for Alberta since they
won the Bronze, ½ of 16 points for placing B.C. in the Bronze, your full 7
points for Team Canada, since they won the Bronze, and ½ of 7 points for placing
Ontario in the final. So altogether
that’s 16 + 8 + 7 + 3.5 = 34.5 points! For putting just 23 points on the 2
games. THAT’S how the playoff bonus
points pay off!
ENOUGH ALREADY, GO BACK
TO THE ENTRY FORM, AND GOOD LUCK NOW! And
if you have any questions, please contact me somehow! OK thanks!
This form, and any other Glen pool
documents, can be found at: http://glenmoor.ca/Pools/GlenPools.htm
