It all kicks off tomorrow, so any players who still haven’t submitted their first guess should get it in quickly!
On that… Another feature of the old 24-23-…-2-1 scoring system was that there was an incentive to play from the start. Flipping it had the unwanted side effect of allowing someone to drop in with only five days to go and win it. This seemed unfair on those who had been in from the start and for me detracted from the feel of the competition a bit. The list based guess format helped a bit but I haven’t been happy with the situation since it began. For one season only players starting late had their points scoring offset by their delay – so a player that started on day 10 and then scored on day 16 would receive only six points rather than sixteen, for example. This ended up being quite confusing (as I remember it on one day three people with three different starts scored) and so was scrapped, possibly in the middle of the same season.
For this year, should it be needed, and again on a trial basis, players starting late are deducted the relevant number of points from their total – so the player who joins after window 10 has been opened will start on -10. I like, and want players to start at the start, and hopefully this change should encourage that!
The rules and website have been updated accordingly. Good luck everyone, and get your guesses in!