The Games People Play

It is the time of year to start entering various prediction competitions and this year there seem to be far more than ever before. I noticed this partly through my efforts at promoting my own TMR Game, there have been comments from some quarters saying there are too many games this year – and perhaps there are. It is getting difficult to keep track of what’s what and where, so here are the games I plan to play in 2010. I’m not promising to stick with all of them because my memory is terrible – I will do my best.

I’ll start with F1 and move on to IndyCar. Why don’t you let me know what games you’re playing and perhaps I’ll tag along too?

SofaF1 Pole Poll (F1)

A nice easy going game to start from Alex and the guys at SofaF1. For each race you predict who will be on pole and the top ten race finishers (was top 8 last year). You get a point for a ‘near miss’ e.g. predicting 5th but actually comes 4th. Deadline is the start of qualifying, and the prize is a modest trophy… eventually.

I’ve linked to the extra part of the game, where you choose the top 8 (or ten?) finishers in the Championship which is worth double the points of a race. You don’t have to do that part to play the game during the year.

F1 Wolf (F1)

Fairly similar to SofaF1 in that you pick your top ten for each race, as well as driver with pole and fastest lap. There’s also a pre-season choice of championship winning driver, you have until 23.59 GMT Thursday to choose a champion and I’ve linked directly to that page, there should be another thread soon regarding Bahrain’s picks.

This will be my first year playing Wolf’s game, I’ve heard good things from others and I’m looking forward to it. The prize? 3 bottles of Mumm champagne!

VivaF1 – Predictions (F1)

This is a quirky one, my first time playing this too. Pick the pole winner, the race winner, the slowest driver in qualifying, the team that finishes 7th (what??!), and whether any ‘new team’ will finish the race. It looks like these questions may change from race to race which makes things interesting! Note you will have to sign up to the VivaF1 forum to take part.

VivaF1 – Quiz (F1)
Signing up also grants access to the chat area which is the home of the weekly quiz at 8.30pm UK time every Wednesday.

Fantasy Racers (F1) / Fantasy IndyCar / Fantasy WRC

A series of related games where you are given a budget with which to buy drivers, usually enough for 3 good ones or a more varied mix of 4 or 5. I have joined the Sidepodcast-affiliated leagues in all three variations. The prize is a trophy.

IndyCar.com

Pick several drivers, but you can only pick a driver so many times in the season. Being the official game of the series there are several prizes available although some or all may be US-only. I play in the Planet-IRL.com league – if I were able to play in two leagues without signing up a 2nd time I’d joined the Midweek Motorsport league too. Unfortunately at the time of writing the site is caught in a loop where I’m logged into IndyCar Nation but it won’t let me log in to the game section (and you do need a free login to play).

16thAndGeorgetown Fantasy Racing (IndyCar)

This is the dedicated game-site of the 16th&Georgetown blog. Pick one driver per race – but you may only pick a driver twice per season. You score the points of the position, so if your driver finishes 8th you get 8 points. The player with the least number of points at the end of the season will win a ride in the Indy Race Experience 2-seater IndyCar! Now I can’t collect that prize, not that I’m arrogant enough to think I’ll win it, I’m playing this anyway just for fun because it seems a challenging game (note – I did ask James if I could do this).

is it May yet? Izod IndyCar Series Prognostication Pool of Doom (IndyCar)

This is different. You choose whether drivers will complete 2010 at a higher or lower position than their 2009 ranking in the points table, the number of wins they will have, the number of top tens they will have, and answer some questions. There may be a prize, there may not be.

All-Racing Fantasy League (Multi-series)

This is an email-based game featuring F1, IndyCar, NASCAR, ALMS and GrandAm. You have 14 drivers and may play up to 10 of them per week, on a 5-oval and 5-road course split. The catch is that the drivers are shared among the players and no player may have the same driver as someone else! These facets combine to create a game of strategy. There is a small fee to enter and that creates the ‘pot’ for the winnings at the end of the year.

I’ll add a link to this later, this post took a while to write and I need to get to bed! (sorry Andy!)

TMR Game (Multi-series)

That’s here! It is based on the ARFL with huge thanks to Andy/Speedgeek, and adapted for blog-based entries and adjusted a bit for this blog’s target audience.

I’ve linked to this week’s entry but keep an eye on the blog for updates and there’s also the Game page. Just pick up to 10 drivers per week with no more than 7 from a single race. This week you can have 7 F1 and 3 IndyCar, or 5 from each, or just have 7 from one if you feel like it. It covers a variety of series but don’t worry if you don’t know about some of them, just enter what you’re comfortable with. The prize is merely to declare that you watch too much racing!

Let me know if you play any of these! I hope this prompts you to have a go at some of these games (hopefully mine!), and do let me know what you’re doing, even if I don’t end up playing them I’m interested to know.

14 thoughts on “The Games People Play”

  2. I have ended up in too many fantasy leagues this year. Last year, it was just the Sidepodcast league of Fantasy Racers but this year it is also the related leagues for WRC and IRL plus TMR.

    I joined the WRC competition after I left a comment for Kathi on Sidepodcast asking if she knew only the first hundred teams to join the Panda Racing League contributed to the inter-league competition and suggesting she sign up sooner rather than later. She replied she knew and was not entering, “No Kimi, no Kathi.”, resulting in a conversation that saw Danny offer to set up the WRC competition and Kathi persuaded to enter the F1 league after all. So I figured I should also enter the WRC competition as indirectly my action had instigated it’s existence.

    Although I joined the IRL Panda 500 league, I decided I would pick my drivers and stick with them just for a bit of fun. I am determined not to get involved in trading but I question my ability to resist.

    That’s the thing, I do take it far too seriously and I was aware of the TMF game before the Daytonna 24 hours but decided it was one competition too many and then was tempted in anyway. I get far too involved, looking up information on the internet, each and every competition collating figures on sheets of A4, making myriad calculations, putting lots of thought into my methodology, and generally agonising over my choices. Also, I have found myself watching the latter parts of all the NASCAR races this season when really not that interested in NASCAR.

    And do I get the results? Not really. WRC, I am in the bottom half of those that have done both rounds. Last season, I did not make the top 10% in the Sidepodcast league and got two of my best scores when due to internet problems I could not change my team. However, these things take skill and luck (how unlucky was it that I was not anything like as clever as Kathi on sussing the trading system?) and I am doing fairly well in TMR. I know it would be good to have a few more entrants but it is nice to be in a league in which I can win the occassional week and probably will not win overall but might just, rather than something the size of the Fantasy F1 in which ever getting a top-25 score or making top-five in the private league is unlikely.

    Anyway, you are ahead of me in the WRC, also TMR but only by dint of my missing the first round. Picking drivers for the F1 fantasy competition looks like being a real pig-in-a-poke and of course a good or bad result will effect ongoing team value. My choice is Hamilton, Button or Vettel (leaning towards the latter) and risking the rest on the Sauber drivers in the hope they will be a good investment – although I will probably reconsider after Friday practice. After much calculation, it is Franchitti, Wheldon, Wilson and Power for IRL even though that leaves me with 3.3 million unspent.

    Sorry about the length of this comment. I really must get a blog.

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  3. Hi Pat,

    Thanks for the Viva plugs. I’m taking part in several, firstly there’s your TMR league (hoping to do better this week with F1 to pick from), then I’m also doing Fantasy Racers as part of Viva’s private league and I’m doing the ZDK Prediction league which I’ve done for the last two seasons.

    Thanks for the reminder about the SofaF1 Pole Poll, I must do that too. There are a few great ones about but for me, and my dodgy memory, it’s better that I stick to just a few.

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  4. Pat, you are the MAN! Just yesterday, I was trying to compile a list of all of the fantasy leagues that I wanted to do this year (Fantasy F1 and IndyCar, SofaF1, F1 Wolf, TMR, Is It May Yet?, IndyCar.com, 16th & Georgetown were all I could come up with), and then noticed a trackback from Is It May Yet? to this post. You’ve done all my work for me! I’ll be joining all of the above in the next 48 hours, for sure.

    Of course, my wife saw my already compiled list and my browser, which was open to your site, which prompted her to ask if I was planning on ever changing a diaper or giving a bottle again. I told her that racing season’s over around about mid-November… 😉

    Oh, and thanks for the multiple plugs and mentions of the “Original ARFL”. It’s been an interesting season so far this year, hasn’t it? And we’re just getting started!

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  6. I didn’t really understand the FR trading last year, it seems to be simpler this year so I’m going to dabble in it.

    That’s quite a commmitment though, all the A4 sheets! I tend to have a look around various series websites, look at testing and the go with a mix of that and gut feel based on past performance. It seems to be working so far!

    Don’t worry about long comments.

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  8. Heh, ‘great minds’ etc.
    I often mean to do a little less in order to do more ‘real life’ stuff… but it’s just not as fun 🙂
    No worries on ARFL, hopefully some of the regulars from here will be tempted to join next season.

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  12. SPEEDtv’s Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain runs a decent game called the Super 7 Sweep. It follows the top three NASCAR series, the Rolex and ALMS sports car series plus IndyCar and F1. Easy to play, good prizes.

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  14. Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately I can’t play as it seems to be Americans-only, but perhaps some readers here may be interested.

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