Office pool ideas for Rugby Wold Cup

August 24, 2011 8:30 PM

Our workplace is considering an office pool for the upcoming Rugby World Cup. Looking for suggestions for formats.

I'm looking for ideas on good ways to casually declare oneself the office guru of international rugby. I've seen this Bracketman site which keeps track of all the games, though watching the video makes it seem a bit complicated. One colleague is already working on a spreadsheet where you pick each pool game, and get better results depending on the margin. (For example, you get one point for getting the winner, 3 points for getting the winner and score margin +/- 10 points, 5 points for winner and score margin +/- 3 points, etc.) Points awarded for 1st and 2nd place teams per pool, and redraw once the knock-out rounds begin.

Obviously, this is just a casual work event, so the less time-consuming and less complicated, the better. Any successful schemes used from past welcome, from $1 to pick a team at random to win, to easy-to-follow fantasy rugby rules, please.

posted by Metro Gnome to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (3 answers total)

Dunno. But you need to provide some opportunity for the owner of each team to come dressed in their team colours or national costume, say on the Friday.

And you need to make the really keen ABs fan(s) pay through the nose for the privilege.

And you need to consider how to avoid having the wallabies ticket holder getting beaten up when they win the final.
posted by wilful at 11:05 PM on August 24, 2011

unfortunately I think office pools tend to follow a linear graph where amount of effort required is inversely proportional to number of entrants. I'd go with a simple low entrance fee, gets you a randomly picked team, with a scale of rewards as long as possible. $1 in.
1st - $10, 2nd - $5, 3rd - 7th gets their stake back.
For those that want to be more involved, set up a fantasy league.
posted by Frasermoo at 2:45 AM on August 25, 2011

Response by poster: OK, so, what some people at our office have done is started with a spreadsheet found online to provide the form to fill out and it will calculate quarterfinals etc., based on how you fill out the sheet. The sheet is password protected, and a bit old, so it still has Christchurch as a venue, etc., and can't be changed, but it's pretty well done and doesn't need to change. A colleague then wrote a few pages more to grant points based on predictions. We've decided to grant points as follows:

Winner - Choose the winner of each game to get 1 point.
Margin diff within 7 - Choose the winner of the game and if the margin you choose is within 7 points of the actual margin get 1 extra point.
Margin diff within 3 - Choose the winner of the game and if the margin you choose is within 3 points of the actual margin get 1 extra point.
Margin diff correct - Choose the winner of the game and if the margin you choose is the actual margin get 1 extra point.
Scores - If you choose both scores correctly, get a massive 10 extra points.
Draw - If you choose a draw for a game, irrespective of the actual scores, you get these extra 5 points. If you choose a draw, and get the correct score you get the "Scores - 10 points" as well.
Try's for pool - If you correctly pick how many tries occur across all games in the pool, then you get 5 points.
Quarter Finalists - For each team you have carrying through (top 2 from each Pool), you get 5 points.

Similar scoring will apply to subsequent rounds, however you don't need to have the correct loser in your bracket to gain points. That is, as long as you pick the correct winner (and point margin, etc) you gain the points for that round, regardless of who the opponent was.

Keeping track required some tricky formula development, but hey, it's a one in four year event, so a little time doesn't hurt. MeMail me if you'd like more info.
posted by Metro Gnome at 6:38 PM on August 29, 2011