Roland Garros Inter Board Pick-em Competition

Salmon · Tennis legend

RE: Roland Garros Inter Board Pick-em Competition

steven · Tennis legend

New results up on the site.

James · Satellite level

Nooo.. Nole; and not even close. Here's hoping for a bungee rope for the inevitable drop.

steven · Tennis legend

REPORT AFTER THE SEMI-FINALS

87% of us picked Fed to reach the Final and 83% of us picked Rafa to do so, with over 70% of us going for a repeat of last year's Final, so once again there were quite small movements upwards for those who got them right and big movements downwards for those who took a risk - it'll pay off one day!

TEAMS LEAGUE & OUTLOOK

TAT extended their lead in the teams league by winning the semi-final round, oddly enough, the first round they have actually won!

Centre Court, the only team to have won two rounds (R1 and the QFs) remain in 2nd - because their Fed picks to win the title are midway between TAT (more Rafa picks) and Other Boards (more Fed picks), they are in the odd situation that if Fed wins the title, they will win the league and lose the KO Final, while if Rafa wins the title, they will win the KO Final but TAT will win the league!

Other movers today were AM.com, up 1 to 5th ahead of T4Y ... the Ducklings, down 2 to 10th behind the Grinners and the Jeemies ... and the Feddies, up 1 to 11th ahead of the Djokers.

Other than deciding which team wins (see above), the main effect of the Final on the teams league will be to decide whether the Feddies finish in the top half of the table or dead last, but you don't need me to tell you which result will produce each outcome!

INDIVIDUALS & OUTLOOK

There was no change in the top four for the fourth day in a row, with hebegeebee (IN), who has now got 91/126 winners correct, still 8 points ahead of Linda (AM) in 2nd place.

63% of us picked Rafa to win the Final and 28% picked Fed. One of the latter group, 3rd placed Zutoum (RG), will move up to 2nd if Fed wins the Final and will be one of 4 Fed-to-win pickers in the top 10 and one of 10 in the top 25, but he will be the only Fed-to-win picker to finish in the top 25 if Rafa wins!

MOVERS

All of those outside the top 4 who picked the correct Final moved up between 1 and 25 places today, except the four biggest risers of the day, who all moved up 26 - 40-15 (AM) to 181st, wolf (BT) to 182nd, all2tropical (TN) to 183rd and Rachel (AM) to 234th.

Conversely, two of those who got neither finalist correct dropped more than 100 places - Tscott415 (TA), down 114 to 261st, and Gillyflower (GR), down 109 to 270th.

POST OF THE DAY?

As the Prime Minister would say, I refer you to the answer I gave some moments (ok, hours) ago.

steven · Tennis legend

P.S. Sheddie will be glad to hear that I'm directing half of the ISWS brigade to him. The male half. biggrin

john · Top national player

Hmm, 288th for me. At least I wasn't last!

Salmon · Tennis legend

199th for Greenleaf.

Anyway, thanks to the organisers and all those who posted the brilliant comments on this board and others - you've made these two weeks extremely enjoyable.

Quick question - do we have one for the Olympics? Not suggesting for or against it, just a query!

James · Satellite level

103rd overall, it was my 'out there' Djokovic over Nadal pick that cost me over 80 places in the end.

Count Zero · Tennis legend

204. not the best. silly fed crumbling under the pickem pressue. he knew he had to win for me to bt the shed

Drew · Jun 8, 2008

Well 318th to 278 in the end...defo my worst !

steven · Tennis legend

Olympics - we could do it instead of Cincy, but probably not - there's too much else on then, so I doubt people will need another distraction.

TEAMS

Rafa's win in the Final means that TAT (TalkAboutTennis.com) have won the teams league on their début by more than 3 points from Centre Court, but conversely ensured that Centre Court won the team KO Final against the Other Boards, with TAT finishing in the top three of that competition as well.

The Dammitaires came 3rd in the teams league, though only by 0.07 points from 4th placed MTF. AM.com completed the top 5, while 6th placed Tennis4you won the Final round.

The only significant position change in the table today was the Feddies dropping to last place.

INDIVIDUALS

Picking Monfils to reach the semi-finals won the individual competition for hebegeebee (IN), who ended up 8 points ahead - for a pick 'em with over 300 entrants, that's a LOT!

Linda (AM) managed her second top two finish in the last three tournaments, which is perhaps even more astonishing, and even she was 4 points ahead of Jack (TA), who snatched 3rd place at the last moment because Zutoum (RG), down 10 to 13th, had picked Fed to win the title.

He and d_s (MT), down 24 to 38, are the only Fed-to-win pickers who ended up on the top 50, though under the old scoring system they'd have been outside the top 200, so can be thankful that a bit more weight is given to the early rounds than last year!

MOVERS

Apart from the top two and the bottom six, those who picked Rafa to win moved up today and those who didn't moved down, with the fastest risers being five entrants who moved up 34 players into the top 200.

The biggest fallers (just) were AO Champion ASE (AM), down 61 to 117th, and David Carter (BT), down 61 to 185th. However, one of the stories of this pick 'em has to be the record-breakingly bad performance of one of the newbies from Tennispolis, whom I won't further embarrass by naming here. To be honest, what is more amazing to me is how high the standard of the rest of the pickers is, in the sense that I'd have expected we'd get far more dire scores in pick 'ems as big as this than we actually have.

ROUND WINNERS

The R1 winner with 52/64 correct was Tush (TN) finished 31st.
The R2 winner with 22/32 correct was hebegeebee (IN), who finished 1st
The R3 winner with 10/16 correct was Zutoum (RG), who finished 13th
The QF winner with 5/8 correct was hebegeebee (IN), who finished 1st
The other rounds had multiple winners

NEXT PICK 'EM

The next pick 'em will of course be the one for Wimbledon. Entries will open at http://www.britishtennis.net/Competitions.html soon after the main draw comes out, which I believe is on Friday 20 June, and will close before play in the main draw starts on Monday 23 June. For those who will be unable to access the Internet during any of the main entry period, a semi-blind entry form will be available by the end of next weekend.

POTDs

I can't spend too long on this today else because I have heaps to do before spending a couple of days at Queen's Club on Monday and Tuesday, but I might do a quick trawl of the RG pick 'em threads for any final gems to post in a pre-Wimby report and choose an overall winner. The threads have been pretty quiet for the last couple of days though.

I still find that the one from the Hoose (BT) about spending his lunch break watching live scores in order to "nurse those babies to the finishing line" comes to mind whenever a match gets close and you know the player you picked to win can be a bit dodgy mentally, but there were so many good ones that it may be impossible to choose. Feel free to post reminders of your own favourites though!

Thanks for taking part everyone, I hope you enjoyed it!

steven · Tennis legend

POST 2008-ROLAND GARROS RANKINGS

I have just updated the Hall of Fame at http://www.britishtennis.net/pickem/hallfame.htm?n=1 and the overall team and individual rankings at http://www.britishtennis.net/pickem/ranking.htm?n=1

TEAM RACE

With 1st place in the RG teams KO and 2nd place in the RG teams league to add to their Monte Carlo win, Centre Court have overtaken Rusedski.co.uk at the top of the team race and now lead by nearly 500 points, with BT.net just 43 points behind the Grinners in 3rd.

The Dammitaires, now 4th, and Tennis4you, now 7th, have both moved up two places, while the highest new entry is TAT, RG team league winners, in 9th. Out of the teams that played RG, only the Feddies, down 2 to 10th after finishing last in both RG competitions, have dropped more than one place.

Those teams that have played in all of the pick 'ems so far this year now have seven counting scores and will be able to drop their worst scores after Wimbledon.

INDIVIDUAL RANKINGS - TOP THREE

Despite AM.com only being 6th in the team race, they now dominate the individual ranking list with 8 of the top 10, including all of the top five!

This is despite there now having been a full year of contests since we opened them up to boards other than just BT.net and AM.com, though of course some successful teams like CC have only been playing for a few months so still have lots of players without a full set of 7 counting scores.

Congratulations to Linda (AM), who has not only moved up 5 places to become new world no. 1, but has also opened up a 250-point gap at the top! She has got to no. 1 by finishing in the top two in two of the last three tournaments and was the only player in the previous top 10 to finish in the top 30 of the RG pick 'em.

Wendy (AM) and ASE (AM), the two previous no. 1s this year, have only dropped 1 place each, to 2nd and 3rd respectively, the former by finishing 37th at RG and the latter because he wasn't defending any points. ASE's total has thus remained unchanged despite an uncharacteristic finish outside the top quartile at RG.

OTHER CHANGES IN THE TOP 10

A top 30 finish at RG has helped cdagger (AM) climb 10 to 4th, while Spraggz (AM), up 2 to 5th, enters the top five thanks partly to others failing to defend points.

NyGeL (MT), up 29 to 6th after finishing 11th at RG, is the top non-AM.commer in the rankings and the first MTFer to make it to the top 10, just edging out amalyn (MT), who would almost certainly have made it had she entered RG.

Others joining the top 10 are Grundon (BT), up 14 to 9th, and RoastLamb (AM), up 6 to 10th, both of them having finished in the RG top 25.

Defending RG Champion and former world no. 1 David Cox/Sheddie (BT), down 19 to 24th, has dropped like a stone out of the top 10 after failing to make the RG top 100 this year, while another of BT's former world no. 1s Guy (BT), down 5 to 14th, failed to enter, as did RobC (BT), down 11 to 19th. goldfish (BT) down 15 to 18th, also failed to repeat a good RG performance from last year when she finished 2nd. It's tough at the top!

OTHER RISERS

The fastest risers at each level are as follows:

Top 20 - Randall Six (IN), up 33 to 17th, after finishing 14th at RG
Top 30 - Fedex (GR), up 37 to 23rd, and Flintstone (CC), up 37 to 26th, after top 50 finishes at RG
Top 50 - WimbledonAce (CC), up 53 to 32nd, after finishing 12th at RG
Top 100 - hebegeebee (IN), up 104 to 74th after winning the RG pick 'em
Overall - Akhenaten (BT), up 265 to 157th, and mikeindo (TN), up 265 to 161st, after finishing 5th and 8th at RG respectively

The highest new entrant is Jack (TA), in at 173rd after finishing 3rd at RG, the only pick 'em debutant to make it into the top 15 in the latest competition.

OTHER FALLERS

With nearly 300 more entrants for the RG pick 'em than last year, including over 130 entrants taking part in their first pick 'em, not adding to your points was punished by drops of 1-136 places, even if your points total didn't go down, and some entrants who added quite a few points have gone down too. So, if you have dropped a lot, please remember this and look at what has happened to your points total (the change shown in the last column) in order to put any downward move into perspective.

As far as I can see, the biggest faller of all is blackjack21 (AM), down 290 to 466th after failing to defend points from RG last year.

CBV · Junior player

Thanks for doing the pick em again steven!

Twas a good result for me, i play as Cdagger for AM so i'm up into the top 5, but i should be switching to bt.net just in time for me to plummet down the rankings as my wimbledon points fall off..

steven · Tennis legend

So Greenleaf has his idea of getting a good player to transfer in come off after all ...

Sheddie · administrator

yeah we did the transfer yesterday at queens......was a Bosman-free one

well ok, Count and I cornered him down a dark alley and forced him to sign the contract