2010 NLL Pool

The pool site is ready! No major changes to the pool this year, at least for now. The NLL is switching statistics providers this year, so I may have to rewrite my scripts that retrieve the stats and update my database, so it's possible that the first week's stats may take longer than the rest. Hopefully it won't be a big problem but I have no way to know until the season has started and they start updating their stats.

My annual NLL season preview is here, and it contains all of the player changes for each team as well as my predictions.

The season starts on Friday, January 8 at 7:35pm, so make sure you get your team picked before then!

Faisal wins!

As expected after the second round, Faisal is the winner of the playoff pool, and takes home $135. I managed to come in second for the second year in a row, so once again I don't have to pay anyone $45.

I've added the playoff results to the "Previous Years" menu, so we can remember who we picked and how they did. I will try to do this for other years if I can. I should be able to just reload the database as of the end of those seasons and generate the pages.

I believe for the first time, we had a tie in the final standings - Jeff and Jerry. The team comparison is interesting -- the only difference is that Jeff took Scott Stewart while Jerry took Steve Toll, and both of them ended up with 24 points.

Ways Faisal can lose the playoff pool

1. Scott Ranger outscores Brendan Mundorf and Mike McClellan combined by 18 - Graeme wins
2. Tracey Kelusky outscores Mundorf, McLellan, and Josh Sanderson combined by 72, and Kelusky also outscores Ranger and Sanderson combined by 55 - Lynda wins

I'd say it's pretty safe to call Faisal the winner.

Playoff time!

The playoffs begin this Friday, with Rochester in New York, and San Jose in Portland. On Saturday, Boston heads to Buffalo, and then Colorado plays in Calgary on Sunday. If you're interested, my predictions are here.

The playoff pool is now open, make sure you get your picks in before Friday night!

2009 Results

Steve is the overall winner! Liam put up a good fight, outscoring Steve by 174 over weeks 13 and 14, but had too much ground to make up. Steve takes home $75 for the victory, while Liam picks up both $25 for second place and $20 for winning Q4.

Our quarter winners were Kerri, Steve, Jeff, and Liam. I paid Kerri in cash, and the other three now have free entry into the playoff pool, as does Jerry. I will set up the playoff pool later this week.

Somehow, despite having the same number of people in the pool, the prize money is less this year than last. We have nine people in the pool times $20 each, which makes $180. Subtract the $20 prizes for each quarter, and that leaves $100 for the  overall prize. First place gets 75%, or $75, and second place gets 25%, or $25. Last year's final results blog entry lists Faisal's victory giving him $105 and Mike getting $35 for second place. If anyone can shed light on what I've done wrong here (whether this year or last), please let me know. All I can think of is that when determining the final prize pool, I took the original $180 and subtracted $10 per quarter rather than $20. That gives a prize pool of $140, which would result in the prizes I gave out last year.

New feature on web site

I've added a neat new feature to the main page of the web site. If you hover your mouse over one of the upcoming games, it will show you the players on your team that are in that game. There's a little "clear" link at the bottom that makes it go away. Pretty cool.

Stats for week 1 are invalid

There are no loose ball stats on pointstreak, so the numbers are all off. I will re-do the stats once pointstreak is updated.

Update: The stats are now correct. There were no changes in the standings, only in the number of points.