AUS OPEN 2010 'BATTLE OF THE BOARDS' PICK 'EM

"Be there or risk retaining your sanity for the next two weeks"

The entry form for the Australian Open pick 'em is now available via http://www.britishtennis.net/competitions.html

(at 05.35 GMT on Friday) You have just over 66 hours left to enter!

DEADLINE

The main draw starts at midnight UK time on Sunday night, so entries will close on Sunday at 23.59 GMT, which is 6.59 PM US Eastern, 10.59 Monday Melbourne time and 00.59 Monday CET. However, if you were not in the top 250 of the year-end overall pick 'em rankings, there is a very small chance that they may close earlier - please see (*) below.

There is plenty of time to enter, so no late entries will be accepted under any circumstances. In addition, Bethan (who has kindly agreed to process the entries again) will need to get some sleep on Sunday night, so unusually, the deadline will not be extended if rain delays the start of play.

CAVEAT

I have been ill recently and I have masses of work to catch up with, much of which (sadly) is far more important than BOTB. In particular, I have a meeting on Tuesday morning that I have to be well prepared for.

Taking short breaks to do tennis stuff is fine (indeed, necessary to preserve my sanity ), but getting the full results pages ready takes out a sizeable chunk of time. This may mean that the full results service doesn't become available until the start of day 3, but hopefully that would still be better than not having an AO pick 'em at all this year! Once they are up, updating them only takes a few seconds, so once updates actually start, they will be as frequent as ever.

Hopefully, I'll do a lot better than that, but just thought I should warn people in advance.

MATCHES INVOLVING QUALIFIERS

Qualifying is due to finish on Saturday. If it does, the entry form with qualifiers placed will be available by noon GMT on Saturday. You are of course welcome to enter before that and pick for matches involving qualifiers without knowing who they are if you want to.

(*) ENTRY LIMIT

We will cap the number of entrants at 500 if more than 500 people enter, with the top 250 in the overall pick 'em rankings getting automatic entry as long as they enter before the deadline and the remaining places going to those outside the top 250 and newbies on a first come first served basis. Automatic entry for top 250 players only applies if you enter with exactly the same name as is shown on the overall rankings at http://www.britishtennis.net/pickem/ranking.htm?n=1 so please be careful!

I doubt we'll go over 500 this time because Tennisopolis aren't 'bribing' anybody to be on their team any more  but there is still an outside change that we might need to impose a limit if we get a sudden spike in entries from an unexpected source. A link on the competitions page gives more info about exactly how it would work.

EMAIL REMINDERS

Email reminders to those who asked for them will be going out sometime on Friday, or on Saturday afternoon to those who asked to be reminded only when qualifiers have been placed.

GOOD LUCK! (this is going to be a tough one to pick, so you'll probably need it ...)