Pickem (beta) development discussion

[RobParker]

Looks great

How easy is it to add other sports, specifically English Football (soccer)?

Do you just add the 20 teams in the league and then enter the whole seasons fixtures or do you need to enter each team name each week? Also can it handle a team having more than 1 match a week?

 

[Bob]

Looks great

How easy is it to add other sports, specifically English Football (soccer)?

Do you just add the 20 teams in the league and then enter the whole seasons fixtures or do you need to enter each team name each week? Also can it handle a team having more than 1 match a week?

Adding a new sport is a very simple process. You click on a link, it pops up an overlay, you enter in the Sport Name & Abbreviation.. ie [Major League Soccer] [MLS] click add sport and now you have a new Sport Type. Next you click on Manage Teams (for that Sport Type).. This takes you to the Manage Teams interface page. click on Create Team. This pops up an overlay. There is a drop down for "sport type" .. chose the sport type that you just created... then there are 4 input boxes for Team Info (Team City, Team Nickname, Team Abbr, Team Logo).. ie [Oakland] [Raiders] [OAK] [raiders.png] click add Team. You do this for each team in the league. Only need to do it once on install AND I am building and interface that will allow people to export/import sport types that will have complete data sets. If its a popular data set, I will include it with the core addon.

First you create a "Pool" something like [English Football League Regular Season 2012]
Then you create the league schedule (which is done by "weeks").
Then you add the matchups for that "week" (drop down interface).

You can have as many matchups per week as you need. This is good for sports like Hockey, baseball, basketball where teams play multiple games during a given week.

I'll try and get some time to post up some images. Its really super easy to use and manage.

 

[RobParker]

That sounds perfect. Any chance of getting an installable demo for our test site?

 

[David H]

That sounds perfect. Any chance of getting an installable demo for our test site?

What are you looking to test that would require a demo installation?

 

[RobParker]

The above really; setting up a new sport, adding the teams, etc. Also getting our mods familiar with how it all works.

It sounds like it's all straightforward but it would be good to test before purchasing (we'll definitely be purchasing the Sportsbook and have been testing that for the last few months)

If you can't provide a demo that's understandable, just release it soon for purchase ;-)

 

[David H]

Generally we avoid demos you can install for obvious reasons. If you want your staff to play, you can invite them over to use our demo and just point to this thread for instructions/information.

 

[RobParker]

Fair enough.

Any idea when it's likely to be released?

 

[mrb1972]

This looks interesting, I have a few questions -

1. Is there a way to disable the "Team Logo" option - reason being that here in the UK we are not allowed to use the football premier league teams logos due to copyright laws

2. What does "spread" mean? on the demo the spread column has "0 at"?

3. So basically the idea is to pick the winning team? How does the scoring system work - is it 1 point per correct guess?

4. What about games that end in a draw?

5. What about the correct score per match too - example in football/soccer , Chelsea vs Wolves - I predict a 3 - 1 win for Chelsea, the result ended 3-1 to chelsea so I get 1 point for picking chelsea as the winner and a bonus point for getting the correct score

Thanks

 

[David H]

Fair enough.

Any idea when it's likely to be released?

You'll see it soon.

 

[RobParker]

This looks interesting, I have a few questions -

1. Is there a way to disable the "Team Logo" option - reason being that here in the UK we are not allowed to use the football premier league teams logos due to copyright laws

2. What does "spread" mean? on the demo the spread column has "0 at"?

3. So basically the idea is to pick the winning team? How does the scoring system work - is it 1 point per correct guess?

4. What about games that end in a draw?

5. What about the correct score per match too - example in football/soccer , Chelsea vs Wolves - I predict a 3 - 1 win for Chelsea, the result ended 3-1 to chelsea so I get 1 point for picking chelsea as the winner and a bonus point for getting the correct score

Thanks

I have pretty much the same comments/questions and think mst people using it for football would have

 

[Mr. Brightside]

Hello.

I have eSports community on XenForo. Pickem - sounds very good, but it should work with eSports (StarCraft, Cstrike, Dota2 e.t.c.).
I know cybersport very well and can help with testing and feedback.

Sorry for terrible English, I'm from Russia

 

[Bob]

This looks interesting, I have a few questions -

1. Is there a way to disable the "Team Logo" option - reason being that here in the UK we are not allowed to use the football premier league teams logos due to copyright laws

2. What does "spread" mean? on the demo the spread column has "0 at"?

3. So basically the idea is to pick the winning team? How does the scoring system work - is it 1 point per correct guess?

4. What about games that end in a draw?

5. What about the correct score per match too - example in football/soccer , Chelsea vs Wolves - I predict a 3 - 1 win for Chelsea, the result ended 3-1 to chelsea so I get 1 point for picking chelsea as the winner and a bonus point for getting the correct score

Thanks

1. You don't need to use Team Logos. Simply don't input a team logo when creating the team. Its that easy.

2. Spread are numbers chosen by oddsmakers to encourage an equal number of people to wager on the underdog and the favorite. For example, -3.5 indicates that team is favored by 3.5 points.... +3.5 indicates that team is the underdog by 3.5 points. Picking the favorite means the team must win by at least four points to cover the spread. The underdog team can lose by three points and still cover the spread and get the pickem "WIN". Its a very popular type of pool. In straight up pools, the spread is 0.

3. Yes, one point per correct pick.

4. Draws do not count as a win. A win in pickem is straight up.

5. Nope, never seen that in any pickem game (Yahoo, CBS Sportsline, ESPN etc). Have no plans for anything like that. I DO have plans for Tie Breakers between players similar to how Yahoo, CBS Sportsline and ESPN do theirs

 

[Bob]

The above really; setting up a new sport, adding the teams, etc. Also getting our mods familiar with how it all works.

It sounds like it's all straightforward but it would be good to test before purchasing (we'll definitely be purchasing the Sportsbook and have been testing that for the last few months)

If you can't provide a demo that's understandable, just release it soon for purchase ;-)

Since you are already familiar with Sportsbook, you are familiar with creating Events. Its similar to that and or like creating Outcomes. Simple, quick interface with easy management. For example. I did the NBA the other day.. took me 15 minutes to enter in the entire league and that included logos. Without logos, could have been done quicker.

 

[Bob]

Hello.

I have eSports community on XenForo. Pickem - sounds very good, but it should work with eSports (StarCraft, Cstrike, Dota2 e.t.c.).
I know cybersport very well and can help with testing and feedback.

Sorry for terrible English, I'm from Russia

Sorry, I have no idea what you are asking or talking about. Can you try and explain it better.

 

[mrb1972]

4. Draws do not count as a win. A win in pickem is straight up.

5. Nope, never seen that in any pickem game (Yahoo, CBS Sportsline, ESPN etc). Have no plans for anything like that. I DO have plans for Tie Breakers between players similar to how Yahoo, CBS Sportsline and ESPN do theirs

4. Ok, but a lot of soccer/football games are draws, so a member would need to be able to pick winner or a draw

5. They are called "prediction games" but again I think are geared to soccer

It sounds like this add-on is really geared more towards the American sports rather that soccer/football, which is a shame

 

[Bob]

4. Ok, but a lot of soccer/football games are draws, so a member would need to be able to pick winner or a draw

5. They are called "prediction games" but again I think are geared to soccer

It sounds like this add-on is really geared more towards the American sports rather that soccer/football, which is a shame

4. The entire concept of pickem is to pick the winner. A Draw is not a win, its a TIE. I am going to add in (at some point) the ability for the Admin to set whether Ties count as Wins (1 point) or Losses (0 points). It also wouldn't be to difficult to customize it to make correct picks worth 2 points and a Tie 1 point (this is something that I may also at some point build into the system)

5. Prediction league software is different than pickem software. At some point down the road, I MAY look into prediction league software, however, Pickem will remain Pickem League software. [XI] Pickem is based off of Yahoo's NFL Pickem, CBS Sportsline Pickem, ESPN Pickem, and Fox Sports Pickem.

I have a feeling that you are looking for the Premier Soccer League addon from vB. This isn't it.

 

[RobParker]

Its so close to being usuable for soccer matches but as above, it'd need the option to pick "no winner" (i.e. a draw). To keep it simple, could it work that if no winner is selected it just treats that as predicting a draw? That would get rid of the need for any changes to the UI, etc and an "allow draw" admin option would let any error checking still work for other sports (assuming it checks that all matches have been picked).

If this is still beyond the scope then fair enough but it sounds like it wouldn't be that bad.

 

[mrb1972]

Its so close to being usuable for soccer matches but as above, it'd need the option to pick "no winner" (i.e. a draw). To keep it simple, could it work that if no winner is selected it just treats that as predicting a draw? That would get rid of the need for any changes to the UI, etc and an "allow draw" admin option would let any error checking still work for other sports (assuming it checks that all matches have been picked).

If this is still beyond the scope then fair enough but it sounds like it wouldn't be that bad.

i agree with this, even adding the option to pick a draw would make it workable for football forums, if this was possible it would open a massive amount of potenial customers for this add-on, I for one would purchase it

 

[mrb1972]

4. The entire concept of pickem is to pick the winner. A Draw is not a win, its a TIE. I am going to add in (at some point) the ability for the Admin to set whether Ties count as Wins (1 point) or Losses (0 points). It also wouldn't be to difficult to customize it to make correct picks worth 2 points and a Tie 1 point (this is something that I may also at some point build into the system)

Just being able to pick a "win" or "tie/draw" and just giving 1 point for either would make this usable with football, as the other poster said its very close to being workable

 

[Bob]

I will look into a Draw type pool (similar to making a pool against the spread or not against the spread). It will be an option when you create the Pool (so that you can have non draw type pools as well)... however its not as simple as it may appear and it needs to be done "right" so that it doesn't effect other existing scoring functionality (such as the spread pools coding, and the non picks coding). For example, the not selecting a pick won't work, it will have to be an additional pick type option, ie, another radio button that is selected to pick a draw for each match. Also, when that person picks a Draw and one of the teams win, that selection would equal a loss (just to be clear). On a Draw Pool, they would have the option to then pick a single winner or pick the 2 teams to draw... the outcome count be one of 3.. team 1 wins, team 2 wins, draw... you would only get a point for picking the correct option out of the 3. If that would work for you, then I will add it to the todo list for the next beta version.