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.

eblunt wrote:

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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.

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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!


REPORT ON DAY 1

All of the detailed results as at the end of day 1 and lists of everybody's picks can now be found via http://www.britishtennis.net/Competitions.html.

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

I'm 408th out of 409. I'm also part of the BT team. Sorry guys!

I'm down in the 390s and also a member of BT.net lol

steven wrote:

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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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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

-- Edited by ForeverDelayed at 16:22, 2008-06-24

-- Edited by steven at 00:10, 2008-06-25

Over 18s - your 18 years and x days old. Thus you are x days over 18.