Nice. tyKiwanuka, tomahawk9 and mole0815 all paid and we've hit our target so any additional people who join now will bump up the prizes.

Agreed. They're glorified friendlies and a lot of big players aren't even participating in them. They should have cancelled or postponed the Nations League with the start of the Premier League and other European leagues starting this weekend or shortly after. It's far too close. England game was boring as well. Can't see tonight's match being much different either. They were very lucky to win it and it should have been a draw if not for the Iceland penalty miss.


What about Watford? Those new home shirts look tasty:



If anyone wants to join Sportsbet's sponsored Premier League predictor pool please do so here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5270461.0

Nearly 0.3 in bitcoin to be won plus many more prizes. If you enjoy betting on the Premier League then you will almost certainly enjoy the pool.

You can set the pool so you have to manually accept or deny users and that clock just means you haven't been approved (or denied) yet. It doesn't matter really as you're still a participant unless you get declined. I just have it that way so no users who haven't paid sign up.


Nobody has multiple entries as far as I'm aware. I'm not going to start requiring everyone to disclose "friends" on or off bitcointalk as it's not going to do anything. If someone wants to 'cheat' this way then they can easily do it, but it's not something I expect and seeing the scores of another person only gives you a slight advantage anyway. As I said before, if people are paranoid about cheating then you can avoid this by either changing your scores before kick off or only putting them in as close to kick off as possible. Turning off the ability to see scores until after kick off is one of the premium features but they only seem to accept credit cards and there's no option to put your name in so it probably uses the one that you signed up with so I probably couldn't do it even if I wanted to (unless I legally change my name to Hilarious Andco).

Nice. If mole0815, BitcoinGirl.Club, tomahawk9, ulven and bitsat pay then that will be 36. Really hoping we can get 40 users or more now and we can have a few more bonus prizes or bump up the 6-10 places.

rdbase just signed up. We have 30 users now but need another 4 to hit the target of 0.3. We should get that as I think there's 4 or 5 who promised to pay but nothing is guaranteed and I'd like to try get it to 40 users if we can.


Assuming they all pay. There's always a few cock-teasers  . It would be really nice if we could get 40. The pool will have grown by ten members each year then. Seems a way away though.


Well I don't think we could ban a user from winning multiple prizes as that would kinda seem unfair as well if they paid twice. I wouldn't really mind a user winning two spots but it would obviously be a bit shit if one year someone signed up with 5 accounts and won them all. That would be hard to do though and you're probably more likely to lose with all 5. I guess we could try to discourage users signing up with more than one but at the end of the day there's nothing stopping one from being sneaky about it. If somone this year wants multiple shirts maybe just try recruit a friend and let them play whilst you keep the shirt.

It would be easy to do this if you wanted anyway. All you need is a friend who's in the pool. If you're worried about cheating this way you could either not put your picks in until nearer kick off or put a fake score in then change it.


I deleted that pool. It was the only way to message all previous users.

I think Chelsea may be the overlooked team this season. Could even see them doing better than Liverpool. I certainly think they'll be in the big three along with City.


Champions League? Really? I'm a Leeds fan but I think just staying out of the relegation zone is going to be a massive achievement. This isn't the glory days where we grew up with them in the PL and challenging for things back in the early days. All Leeds is is a name right now and to an entire generation they're just an an average Championship team as they've been out of the PL for 15 years. They need to earn their status back which isn't going to be easy. Bizarrely though they're seventh favourite to win the league: https://m.skybet.com/football/premier-league/event/25422280

Hard to believe they're above Leicester, Wolves and Sheff United. Heck, and all the rest.

If anyone wants to join the Sportsbet sponsored predictor pool please do so here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5270461.msg55039640#msg55039640

Only a week left to go now and there's thousands of dollars worth of prizes to be won including 0.1BTC for first place. If you like betting or talking about football then this is the best place to do so along with our discussion thread that is very active throughout the season and is only open to participants of the pool.

 

No problem. Just trying to drum up a bit more interest in this last week. Really hoping we can get to 40 users as we can bump up the value of consolation 5-10 place places. I might do another round of consolation prizes for the highest scorers again like we did last time but there is the $50 free bet every week for that so maybe it's not needed. Maybe we could have one to three prizes for the overall top highest scorers overall or something.

Here's who we've got so far:

webtricks
swogerino
morvillz7z
Mbitr
TBA
TBA
casperBGD
buwaytress
Hhampuz
leea-1334
LTU_btc
DeathAngel
Harkorede
cryptofrka
trofo
slaman29
hahay
big_daddy
rifmax
tokeweed
examplens
Avirunes
kryptqnick
LFC_Bitcoin
jeremypwr
vd309
jayce
DireWolfM14
rdbase
TwitchySeal

With

mole0815, BitcoinGirl.Club, tomahawk9, ulven and bitsat down to pay.

29 users signed up now. Lets see if we can get to 30 by Monday. All we need is four more to hit the target of 0.3 pot. Spread the word.

DireWolfM14 signed up. One more person needed to hit 30.

tomahawk9 said he will pay by the start as did BitcoinGirl.Club mole0815, and ulven. BitSat19 said he will pay by the 12th so I'll give him until then to pay. Again, if anyone wants to play but cannot pay before the 12th I will give you a months grace period to get the funds in.


Well only one person can win the weekly free bet so it doesn't matter too much there. I guess you've got an advantage if you use two accounts with different scores as you've doubled your chance of winning but you've still got to do great on one of them to win. As someone else mentioned, it's probably going to be a disadvantage having more than one account, especially if you're not consistent on one of them.


I guess so. I'll have to think about it. I wouldn't want someone having five accounts and then winning the top 5 spots but obviously it's risky having more than one account with the same picks because if you don't do good then you won't win anything at all. I'll listen to others opinions on it but it's not like it's something I could enforce strictly. Maybe we could allow it for this season and see how it goes.

Probably will do that if we don't hit the target. Hopefully we don't need to as there are a handful of people who did say they would pay, but you always get some no shows but I'm sure there will be a few last minute joiners as well. As I said before, it anyone wants to play but don't think they will be able to get the money together before Saturday I could give a months grace period or so if this is essential, but again, don't bankrupt yourself to join.


There's nothing stopping anyone from having multiple accounts anyway so it wouldn't really be enforceable much like the forum deals with alts, but it's only an advantage if you're good, but if someone is willing to pay twice I don't see an issue. They could just be doubling the money they throw away or do good on one and not the other which could lead to average results overall. Either way I personally don't have an issue with it but maybe others disagree. Personally I would just prefer more money in the pot but I would be surprised if one person won something on both accounts unless they both entered the same picks week after week. If I was to have two though I'd probably go with slightly experimental or riskier scores on one.

A week to go now guys. 28 people have signed up so lets try get that to 30 before Monday. A few users have promised to pay so we should hit 30 users at least but we need 34 to give the prizes I stated in the op. If we don't hit at least 30 I'll probably have to get rid of a couple of the eight and ninth place pay outs. Spread the word and lets try to get 34 users before Saturday.

A week to go now guys. 28 people have signed up so lets try get that to 30 before Monday. A few users have promised to pay so we should hit 30 users at least but we need 34 to give the prizes I stated in the sign-up thread. If we don't hit at least 30 I'll probably have to get rid of a couple of the eight and ninth place pay outs.


I've PMd them about clarification on the prizes.

As expected Messi is staying put... at least for this season: https://www.goal.com/en/news/messis-barcelona-heartbreak-revealed-from-his-sons-tears-to/1mpozogbymuza1fep1f6vv3oz2

Seems to be playing the pity card and blaming it all on the hardships his family will face and that he doesn't want to have to take Barca to court, which would have just complicated the whole move. I think it would have been sad for him to leave in such an acrimonious way but I kinda hope he does leave at the end of the season as I would like to see how he fares at another club, especially one in the Premier League. If he states his intention to leave this season then at least there won't be any bad blood and this season can be seen as his 'victory lap'. The question is will he be leaving or will we have to go through all this business again?

Sent.


There's 27 paid so far I think. A handful of people have yet to join via superbru.

I can't see why not but I can ask for clarification. It hasn't been stated to me that it's only one shirt per person, but if they do say that's the case you could just sign up to Superbru with a different account and get one sent to a friends address or something. 

Sure. As many as you like.


I'm sure someone will bet you something. I know there were a few side bets going on last season.

Nearly a week to go before the season starts.


What cryptofrka said is correct: everyone who joins gets a shirt. It was and still likely is a Watford shirt as from what I understood Sportsbet have a surplus of them, but I'll get confirmation before the season starts. Either way maybe sportsbet will throw in some of the new Watford or Southampton shirts for some of the winners but don't quote me on that.

Another person signed up. Nearly a week to go now. As I said above, if anyone is struggling to get the money together before the start of the season let me know and I may give you a months grace period if that's all you need, though I would rather have the money in before so I can work out the full prizes. spread the word if you can as I'm sure everyone knows someone who would like to play.

He's either going to leave for free or stay. I very much doubt any club can afford or even want to pay his ludicrous by out clause, especially when they could just wait a year or so and get him for free. It would be in Messi's best interest to go for free anyway as he can then go wherever he likes and get the best deal possible for himself which wouldn't be the case if he had to be bought as it would basically mean Barca will ship him off to anywhere to whoever pays the most. It's a similar situation with Gareth Bale. He's not going to go anywhere unless they match his Real contract which isn't going to happen as he's on a shitload so it's best that he just runs his contact down then leaves to whatever club he wants as a free agent. He's unlikely to get even half of what he's on now so it makes sense for him to just sit on the bench earning £600,000 a week or whatever he's on.

A good business decision maybe, but it looks like half their first team is potentially going to leave, possibly including Messi. At least that would probably save them 100 million. Still no real update on his situation with Messi's father only saying that it's a difficult situation but also that he hasn't spoken to Pep which is a bit worrying regarding his potnetial move to City:


https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11833/12061481/lionel-messis-father-arrives-in-barcelona-for-crunch-talks-with-la-liga-club

I'm sure he'll stay and all this is just a stunt by Messi to show he's willing to walk away if he doesn't get the terms he wants.