Week fourteen recap
And for the third time in the last four weeks, the Steelers choked against supposedly inferior opponents, upping to total of 39 players eliminated.
So for those clamoring about getting rid of buybacks next year, I’ve pretty much made up my mind. All of the other rules I think will stay the same. Look at this way: Let’s assume the season is only fourteen weeks long. So we now have 48 players left, splitting a pot of $5,240. That’s roughly $109 per player.
But 16 of those remaining players used their buyback to stay in the pool. Let’s assume we didn’t have buybacks this year, so we’d have 32 players left with a payout of $113 per player. So if I get rid of buybacks, not only does it spare me the headache of having to keep track of buyback payments in addition to hundreds of picks every week, the payout of those that survive (remember, it IS a survivor pool) is actually higher!
Basically if you have buybacks, you just end up with more players splitting a bigger pot. It all evens out in the end. And like I just said, it’s a Survivor Pool. The only reason I had buybacks was to keep it running longer into the season when I first started out with much fewer players. Wouldn’t have made it much past the halfway mark of the season the first couple of years, but there’s no reason now that we’re almost guaranteed to have multiple winners after seventeen weeks.
So this week, we have both a Thursday and a Saturday night game. If you want to pick in the Thursday night game, I must have your pick by Thursday afternoon at 5pm ET. If you want to pick in the Saturday night game, I must have your pick by Saturday afternoon at 5pm ET. Anyone who picks those games will have their pick revealed as soon as the system records the final score. All other picks are due Sunday at 10am ET.
December 16th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Sounds good to me…It’s your pool and you can make the rules…. I just appreciate you doing all this work. Thanks
December 16th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
good to see you stand your ground. i could care less about buy backs. but do you think you might increase the entry fee?
December 17th, 2009 at 2:55 am
My suggestion is to eliminate the buybacks and update the buy in price to $20 or $25 dollars per team. I don’t think for such a small increase you would lose that many participants and the pot would double.
Chris
December 17th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
That was my suggestion a few weeks back when all this buyback talk started. Increase the entry fee to $20 and you will have a pot close to what it was this year.
December 18th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Sounds good, it should be a true survivor pool. I’m for increasing the entry fee and/or increasing the number of entries from 5 to 7.
December 19th, 2009 at 9:16 am
one other way, on top of buybacks, that some pools help make sure there’s a winner is to have players make multiple picks in certain weeks. Usually late in the year .. like weeks 13, 14, 15 or something like that .. make 2 picks .. get both right to survive.
That’ll get it down pretty quickly.
December 19th, 2009 at 9:17 am
I meant on top of NOT having buybacks.
December 19th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
i like not having buybacks and increasing the fee. not increasing the entries allowed. but making multiple picks in the later weeks is very interesting. for that would you have to be correct on both picks to advance with that entry?
December 20th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Yes .. you need to be correct on both to advance. What it means is that you’d now have to pick 20 of the 32 teams to win a game correctly in order to be left standing after 17 weeks (3 weeks of double picks).