Can't believe most people trusted Karlovic in a GS again and then complain when he loses first round again!!!
Even I didn't think Stadler was good enough to beat him, but was determined not to get caught out by it and picked Stadler so I'm looking handy now he won.
Nalby was out in round 4, so not too badly damaged by that loss, while Ferrero (the grass "hating" (loving) Spaniard whose twice been a QFinalist here....) did well to win despite being injured, but I've the Del Potro (the pony) getting to round 4 in that section.
Poor Monfils.... oh wait, I had Gicquel making round 3 so that's good for me... and thank God Korolev choked against Berdych as he my QFinalist for some reason
I am going to draw up a list of players not to trust at the next pick 'em and have them all going on to get knocked out in R1. Karlovic, Numpty and Dammit will be top of the list.
I think I hate the first day of 'pickems the most. You start out with that huge level of optimism, conveniently forgetting last months heartbreak. The within 4 hours it's all fallen apart and you might as well give up.
First the obgligatory pull-out by a GEM. Then bang on cue Nalby starts letting you down. Big Ivo blows it again, Ferreiro does what you least expect ... win on grass, and the whole lot's in tatters.
I don't really care now, it can't get any worse.
I know what you mean - I was on 12/12 at one point, then it all went horribly wrong, though I did get JCF who has an outstanding record at Wimby (for a Spaniard)
However, Mr "it can't get any worse", you're in 58th place out of 409. I wish I was!
Wolf - beware, that's the way Numpty and Dammit operate - we all gave up on picking Dammit just before Wimby last year, and most of us gave up on Numpty just before the Madrid and Paris Masters. There's no fun for them in only ever screwing up your pick 'ems by losing, the true masters of their art spend many months lulling you into not picking them and then they pick up 400-500 ranking points when you least expect them to. B*s**r*s!
I did say on the 'thanks for your entry' page that results would only appear for the first time by the start of day 2, but I realise that some of you have been refreshing the page a lot in the last few hours because the results usually start coming out more quickly - the extra wait this time is because it takes 4-5 hours to get all the results pages ready with this many entrants and unlike the AO and RG, entries for this pick 'em closed in the middle of a hectic working day that went on well int othe evening. I hope it was all worth the wait anyway!
Now that it's all done though, we should be able to upload intra-day results quite often from now on.
ENTRANTS
We have broken the 400 entrant mark for the first time and, amazingly, all 409 entrants managed to score at least 50% on day 1. The downside of that is that if you scored exactly 50%, you are equal last, which seems a bit rough! N.B. since we have about 20% more entrants than for RG, top 120 here is broadly as good as top 100 there.
TEAMS
As for RG, we have 13 full teams - the Djokers did not manage to muster 5 entrants this time, but we welcome new team LleytonHewitt.biz - an unofficial site, but the official Posh and Becs (oops, C'mon and Bec) site recommends Lleyton fans to use it as their forum. The BBC, steveg and VB teams also got close, but not quite there.
To get three additional teams for the 16 draw KO comp that starts in R2 and will be seeded based on R1 results, we are amalgamating the two Rafa boards into one composite RafaelNadalFans team, with the Other Boards team being formed from the other teams with less than five members each, team 16 being the Assorted Individuals and the Robots being left out to fight among themselves this time. If you haven't seen the team KO comp before, all will become clearer when R2 gets underway.
TEAMS LEAGUE
If you were wondering whether there were any differences between pick 'ems on grass and clay, just remember that TAT finished RG in 1st place and the Feddies finished RG in last place, then look at the teams league table. Yes, the cardigan wearers are in the lead, but the less said about where the RG-winning TATs are at this stage, the better!
INDIVIDUAL
For more evidence that playing pick 'ems on grass is different to playing them on clay (and you were thinking you played them all on your computer ...), try to find in the Wimby results so far the person whose stellar performances during the clay court season took her to world no. 1 in the overall rankings - hint: don't start at the top!
Despite the shocks on day 1, Lebanese entrant Alia Hamieh (RF) managed to score an astonishing 29/32 to end the day out in the lead on her own (though 7 entrants including last year's US Open Champion amalyn (MT) are just a point behind) - the only results Alia got wrong were the Numpty Nalby, Big Ivo and Peya losses.
Alia doesn't have any of those three players in the last 16, unlike virtually all the rest of us, but if you are beginning to worry that she might run away with the competition, she is one of the select band of entrants who has Davydenko losing to Fed in the Final and Baggy & Muzza are her other two semi-finalists. Remember - you heard it here first ... !
FUTURE REPORTS
I won't have much time to write reports like this one this week, so if anyone feels like picking up the baton and writing about the movers on any given day or their nominations for post of the day, or whatever, please do have a go!
-- Edited by steven at 10:16, 2008-06-24
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
I daren't make a habit of looking for PotDs this time, but from Trisco on CC, the land of the serious addicts, at 00.30 BST ... "Am off to bed folks so goodnight I have a request though if somebody is awake and they see that the BOTB league is up, could you send me a PM please. That will then send an email through to me that I will then receive on my phone which will then wake me up to check." ROFLMAO!! (P.S. I think he meant it!)
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
I'm down in the 390s and also a member of BT.net lol
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Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive.... those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience
Why oh why did I pick that grass court numpty Davydenko to reach the QFs? Oh, that's right, because the other top 16 seed in his 1/8th is PHM, the very same PHM who managed to drop a set to Oscar Hernandez today! Doh!
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
Why oh why did I pick that grass court numpty Davydenko to reach the QFs? Oh, that's right, because the other top 16 seed in his 1/8th is PHM, the very same PHM who managed to drop a set to Oscar Hernandez today! Doh!
I've got PHM in the QF's.... don't feel very confident with that selection, but Davydenko in round 4 isn't looking good at the moment.
Maybe I should have trusted Melzer to go a round further and knock him out, but trust and Melzer don't go together.
(at least I didn't follow on my original call of Chardy to reach the QF's, whose just gone 2 sets to 1 down to Frederico Gil of Portugal, known for it's grass court (or total lack of)
And after watching Gasquet's performance today.... very happy I've got him going to the QF's
N.B. For different reasons, both of us are unavailable tomorrow afternoon and early evening, so there are unlikely to be any updates uploaded to the site between 12.30 GMT (1.30 pm UK) and late evening UK, though after that we should be able to do plenty of intra-day updates for the rest of the tournament.
During Wednesday, you can get a pretty good idea of how you are doing relative to everyone else by checking your picks on the all picks list and checking the %s going for each player on the picks % analysis page.
TEAMS LEAGUE
CC up 2 to 1st an the Feddies down 2 to 3rd swap places around MTF, steady in 2nd. Biggest risers are BT.net, up 5 to 7th, biggest fallers are Tennisopolis, down 5 to 12th.
INDIVIDUALS
Three entrants share the lead at the end of R1 on a very impressive 54/64, just two shy of last year's Wimbledon high of 56, which is the only time any entrants have ever exceeded 54. The three leaders are cazza99 (AM), up 8 with the equal top score on day 2 of 27/32, and d_s (MT) & Duchess (CC), both up 1. All 409 of us scored at least 50% in R1, with exactly 50% now only being good enough for outright last place with the gorillas.
MOVERS
There were a number of 200+ place moves on day 2, the most extreme being:
- Robxon (BT) and Carrie (AM), both up 235 to from 278= to 43= - Knitcole22 (TN), down 269 from 58= to 327=
ROBOTS
Billy the bookie bot is having a great time in the equivalent of 13= (but will suffer later from having picked Ivo to go so deep), as is Average Joe (the bot who scores 1 if the majority get a pick right, 0 if they get it wrong) - the reason why Average Joe is so far above the actual average is that the shocks have tended to be in the matches where there was a quite extreme favourite whereas in the 60:40 matches, the narrow majority has tended to be correct.
Meanwhile, Racy the ATP Race bot is having a dire time, no doubt because the Race is mainly based on clay points at the moment!
OUTLOOK
It's still incredibly tight, with just 4 points (two R2 wins) covering around 200 entrants in the middle of the table.
3 entrants have 29 R2 winner picks who have survived R1 - joint leader d_s (MT), Speedy Hawk (AM), despite dropping 70 to 97= on day 2, and Fitzy (JM), up 109 to 97= on day 2. A quick skim of the table suggests that all of the top 100 have at least 3/4 of their R2 winner picks still in and hardly anybody has less than 20.
TEAMS KO
The draw for the LAST 16 of the Teams KO competition, based on seedings decided by points scored in R1, is:
(1) Centre Court Forum (16) AndyRoddick.com
(9) Other Boards (8) BritishTennis.net
(5) LleytonHewitt.biz (12) JamieMurray.org
(13) Tennis4you.com (4) AndyMurray.com
(3) RogerFederer.com (14) TalkAboutTennis
(11) RichardGasquet.net (6) Rusedski.co.uk
(7) RafaelNadalFans (10) Assorted Individuals
(15) Tennisopolis.com (2) MensTennisForums
These matches will be decided by scores in Wimbledon R2 only, with the winners going on to the QFs and the losers into 9th-16th playoffs. The teams league continues as a separate competition.
-- Edited by steven at 00:10, 2008-06-25
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
Most importantly the Under 18's are beating the Over 18's, I felt obliged to play for the Under 18's as I was 17 years and 364 days old at the time of picking even though I was 18 by the start of the tournament.
It does beg the question as I am now 18 who do I play for. I am neither under 18 or over 18, I am 18.