After the standings, there will be a discussion topic. I appreciate all input in attempting to improve the contest.
Welcome to the 2011 NFL Ladder Contest! In this wonderful contest created by BBallman7, every week during the regular season you have a challenge. If you get it correct, you move onto the next level; if you get it wrong, you stay at that level to try again the next week. Each level gets tougher as you progress. There will also be a bonus question every week; getting the bonus correct adds to your tiebreaker score which in the end would be used to decide a winner if there are multiple people on the highest-reached level. There are no limits to sign-ups, and you can join at any time during the season.
A few ground rules: -Please say which level you are on when you post your pick. In most cases it will probably be obvious, but this makes it easier for me to record the picks. -The deadline to make a pick is at the start of the second set of games on Sunday afternoon (4:15 PM ET). That means no SNF/MNF picks after most all the games have started or finished. Obviously you cannot pick a game that has already started. -The deadline to answer the bonus question is at the start of games on Sunday (1 PM ET). -I get my spreads from an online site providing lines from several sources, both in Vegas and out. Although these sources may continue to change their lines throughout the week, the ones I post in the topic are frozen and final for our purposes.
Explanation of Levels:
Level 1: Pick a winner. Simply pick one team to win their game. If they win, you go on to level 2.
Level 2: Pick an Underdog to win. You must pick a team that is an underdog to win their game. Underdogs will always be the team listed second.
Schedule: (Home team in CAPS; favorites to the left, underdogs to the right) Sunday, September 18th NEW ORLEANS vs Chicago DETROIT vs Kansas City NY JETS vs Jacksonville BUFFALO vs Oakland Baltimore at TENNESSEE PITTSBURGH vs Seattle Green Bay at CAROLINA MINNESOTA vs Tampa Bay Cleveland at INDIANAPOLIS Dallas at SAN FRANCISCO Houston at MIAMI NEW ENGLAND vs San Diego DENVER vs Cincinnati Philadelphia at ATLANTA
Monday, September 19th NY GIANTS vs St Louis
Bonus Question: How many underdogs will win this week?
Remember to check the discussion topic following the standings!
Level 1 - Pick a winner Chrono1219* DpOblivion Dr Football* meche313 MMXcalibur MSS* Pondos RPGLord95* Runemistress* Seginustemple Sir Chris thel3fty The Raven 2 Vcharon* Vengeful_KBM* War* Wizardsfan1000
DISCUSSION TOPIC: The Ladder Contest provides a lot of fun challenges throughout the NFL season, but one area of controversy has been the Broken Rung challenge (Level 7: Pick just one game with the spread, but if you're wrong, you go back down to Level 6). Some have been outspoken about it in the past. I had actually been in support of it in the past, but now that I'm running the contest, I got to thinking about it and I really don't like it.
Spreads are set with the goal of making the chances for either side to win to be as close as possible. So in theory, you are making an educated guess on a ~50/50 opportunity. Most likely those are better odds of success than the surrounding levels, but there's the risk of dropping back down to Level 6 which was already cleared, in some cases taking several weeks to do so. At best, you spend a week on a relatively easy, boring, and repetitive challenge (having already dealt with spreads to a more difficult degree in Levels 3 and 5) instead of attempting one of the more fun and challenging levels.
Now, some of you may like the risky nature of the level, or like it as a bridge to the really difficult levels. Or maybe you just don't want to see such a change made as you compare your performance to previous years. So I would like to see where everyone stands on this issue, whether you are for or against this level and how you might like to see it changed.
Some general possibilities are: Leave it as is; leave the challenge but remove the risk; alter the challenge but keep the risk; remove it and create a new challenge in its place; or skip it and move onto what's usually Level 8.
Don't think I have made it past level 6 the past two years, so the discussion probably won't affect me much. I did get stuck on level 6 for most of the season the first time though (Got through levels 1-5 in 5 weeks then failed every remaining week to pass level 6), so yeah, I'd hate to drop back to that level if I did manage to pass it. I say scrap it. I'm sure you can come up with a good replacement.
From: KCF0107 | Posted: 9/13/2011 7:32:55 PM | #020 I have an idea:
Could you put in the OP the previous bonus question and the answer?
Yeah, I should've done that. I completely forgot about any kind of recap of last week, was focused on the discussion topic (which most are ignoring) and following spreads to get an idea of when I should put the topic up in future weeks. They're taking their sweet time putting out lines for the Monday Night game....
As for the broken rung, maybe tweaking it a bit? Instead of picking one game against the spread, pick two. Get both right and move on, get one right and stay in place, get both wrong and down you go.
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Rusty Bicycle: Rust is the perfect brake. You are technically correct, the best kind of correct!
As for the broken rung, maybe tweaking it a bit? Instead of picking one game against the spread, pick two. Get both right and move on, get one right and stay in place, get both wrong and down you go.
I like the idea of this, if not the exact challenge. I think something that can be a win, a push, or a fail would be a good challenge. A good balance for me would be something that works out to around 20% pass chance, 70% push chance, 10% drop chance (for the epic fail). Of course percents are just theoretical, but the idea that it's hard to move on, but a really low chance of a full fail. I'm thinking something like "Pick at least 3 games (up to all of them) using the spread. If you get 3 wrong using teaser rules (you were wrong by more than 6 points), you drop down. If you get 3 right under normal spread rules, and didn't hit the fail condition, you advance. This way you could take a bigger risk for a high chance of success.