john wrote:

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You should all be embarassed that you let the team down by opposing Andy. I can't believe you booted a believer like me out of the team. I had andy winning that game if you must know. Quite funny how smug you all were that "them losers from am.com will all have andy winning so they have no chance" lol

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For once, I'm happy to be proved wrong and to be losing the competition!

SPOILER ALERT

If you want to know who to cheer for in the matches to come, read this. If you want the final team comp result to be a surprise, please don't! I'm not giving away anything about the individual comp here though.

Where we are now

AM are 117 points ahead of us after Andy's win. If Andy reaches the Final, AM will win the team competition by hundreds of points, but if he does not, there are still a couple of ways we could win.

The first quarter is now dead from the point of view of the team competition, so let's ignore it. The next crunch match is Ljubo (10 BTs / 5 AMs) v Chela (0 BTs / 1 AM - speedy) tomorrow, which will see an 80 point swing to us if Ljubo wins, a 16 point swing to AM if Chela does. If Chela wins, AM are 100% certain to win the competition - We must get the swing from a Ljubo win to stay in with a chance. If we do, then it gets a bit more complicated.

Option 1 - Ljubo beats Chela and Novak beats Rafa

2 BTs and 0 AMs went for Djokovic, so if Djoko beats Rafa, we will get a 32-point swing. If Ljubo beats Chela too (see above), that will be another 80 point swing and we will end the QFs just 5 points (or 0.08%!) behind AM.

Only one player, our Rob Harris, has picked Djoko to reach the Final, so if he beats Andy in the semis again, we will go ahead in the team comp by 27 points. But will we stay there?

Well, it'll then be time for us to say "Thanks for saving our bacon, Ivan, but now please go and lose your semi-final!" because only one person, Donna, has picked Ljubo to reach the Final, and she's from AM! If Djoko plays Ljubo in the Final, the AMs will win by 5 points (3208-3203), which by this time will be 0.06%!

By the way, if Ljubo does reach the Final in this scenario, Donna will move up to 2nd individually, having been last just the other day!

So, from the point of view of the team comp, we should cheer for Ljubo in his QF, boo him in his SF and hope that Djoko beats Andy in the semis again. Got that?

Option 2 - Ljubo beats Chela and Rafa beats Novak

17 BTs and 21 AMs went for Rafa to beat Djoko, so if he does, that would be another 64 point swing to AM, leaving us 181 points behind at the end of Wednesday. We would have no hope left, would we?

Well yes, amazingly enough, we would! (if only a very slim one!)

If Ljubo beats Chela on Thursday, that will cut the gap to (a still big) 101.

Now comes the really interesting bit. Although more AMs than BTs went for Rafa to reach the semis, lots of those AMs went for Andy to beat him in the semis. In fact, 14 of the 17 BTs who picked Rafa to reach the SFs also picked him to win that SF, but only 12 of the 21 AMs who picked him to reach the SFs did so. So if Rafa beats Andy in the SFs, there will be a 64 swing back to us, cutting the gap to 37.

Is your head hurting yet?

Once again, we will need to turn on poor old Ljubo and hope he loses his semi so that Donna (AM) picking Ljubo to reach the Final doesn't put the AMs out of reach, but if Ljubo does lose his semi, 3 BTs and just 2 AMs have picked Rafa to win the Final, so there's a 64 point swing available there, which could let us win by 27.

Summary

Andy v anyone Final - AMs win by hundreds of points
Djoko v Chela Final - AMs win by 69 points
Ljubo beats Rafa Final - AMs win by 69 points
Ljubo goes out in semis, Rafa loses Final - AMs win by 37 points
Djoko v Ljubo Final - AMs win by 5 points
Rafa beats Ljubo Final - AMs win by 5 points (just 0.05% or an average of 1.2 points per player or less than 1 R4 pick)

Ljubo goes out in semis, Rafa wins Final - we win by 27 points
Ljubo goes out in semis, Djoko wins OR loses Final - we win by 27 points

So, in tonight's match, cheer for Djoko unless you think Rafa is more likely to beat Andy and win the Final than Djoko is just to beat Andy. In tomorrow's matches, cheer for Ljubo against Chela and cheer for the player most likely to beat Ljubo in the Canas-Robredo match.

Of course, I might have made a mistake here and this may all be rubbish ...

I find it astonishing that even though each team will end up with thousands of points, there are still so many scenarios in which one team or the other can win by less than 100! What a cool comp this is.
 
E&OE (obviously!)

-- Edited by steven at 00:45, 2007-03-29

AM.com!

I would be supporting BT.net normally but it's only on AM.com where most people have remained loyal. Most people here have thought with their heads instead of their hearts and have gone for winners other than Andy.

johnnylad wrote:

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Where did it all go wrong?

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I blame Federer. And Davydenko, and Nalbandian, and Haas and Safin personally.

I blame all of the useless twonks I picked to do well that lost!

Lujobo won Rob C