Sign up for the first of two great world-cup related opportunities we’ll be offering today.
If you’re a regular on our forums then you’ll have spotted the prediction league that we (dis)organised over the second half of the season. Well it’s back for the world cup and, yet again, there could be more than bragging rights involved.
First off, you might be wondering what the hell a Patent Prediction is. Well, a patent is a multiple bet involving three outcomes. So, for example, if you take predictions on the outcome of three football matches you get:
- A treble – where all three predictions have to be right to win
- 3 Doubles – where any two predictions need to be right to win
- 4 Singles – where any one correct prediction would win
The rules are fairly simple. All you need to do is sit down and predict the outcome of all 48 World Cup group games. I’ll split those into 18 groups of three and every day I’ll put a bet on the outcome of the next three games.
The bet that I will put on will feature the predictions for the top predictor at that time and will be a 15p patent. It doesn’t sound much, but I’m not a millionaire and that 15p goes on each of the 7 bets so the total stake comes in at £1.05. As an example, the following predictions for the first three games:
- Brasil 2-0 Croatia
- Mexico 2-1 Cameroon
- Spain 2-2 Holland
Could return (on current odds) £264.45 from that £1.05 if all predictions were correct.
How do we work out whose predictions we use in the bet? We award 2 points for every correct score that someone predicts and one point for every correct result (i.e. if you predict 2-1 and the actual score is 2-1 you get two points, if it’s 3-1 then you get one point). We get a league table using that points system and we’ll use the predictions of whoever is top of the table on the morning that I put the bet on.
And what’s the point of it all? Well, if there’s any profits on these bets come the end of the group stages, then I’ll split the winnings in half, keep one half and give the other half away as prizes. The split will depend on how many people enter and how much winnings we get, but we’ll announce the details before the games start.
If there’s no profit by the end of the knockout stages, then the winner will get a shiny (maybe) pound coin and a five pence piece.
How do you enter? As I said above, you need to predict the score for each of the 48 group games and send them to us by email (to admin@thisnorthernsoul.co.uk) your deadline is midnight on 10th June 2014 21:00 on Thursday 12th June. I’ll take it from there, but it would make my life a lot easier if you could use this spreadsheet.
Are there any other rules? Just one. You need to be an active member of our forums to play. That means you have to be signed up and posting. We’re not going to start calculating posting rates but anyone who hasn’t started at least one thread and got more than 50 posts by the time we work out the winner will be excluded from the reckoning. (Note, we reserve the right to delete we suspect have been made just to up your count)
You’ll be able to keep up to date with the competition through the World Cup section on our messageboard.
Have fun…
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