The 2018 World Cup Calcutta Pool
 

Hey everyone,

There was interest expressed in the 2014 thread about firing this up again. Let's see who all is interested and get one going!

Current entrants:
cartman
kingfc22
Karlfornia
Critch
digamma
bhlloy
QuikSand
HomerSimpson98
hahnkim
Arles

From digamma's explanation of how it works:


My idea is that to have the most up to date info before bidding, we'll run the auction from Mon-Thur of next week, with the matches starting on Friday.

We'll bid on 8 randomly chosen teams each day, with the bidding staring at 11am Central and stopping around 7pm Central each day. To eliminate the potential for sniping at the end, I'm thinking that there might be a random cut off time between 6:30pm and 7pm.

In

IN!!!

If we're reserving places, I'm in too.

Can't wait.

I’m interested

yasss

So, Russia-Saudi Arabia doesn't count? Yeah, that sounds about right. :)

Oops, I could have sworn when I checked the schedule they played the first game on Friday. So a semi-random draw, with the Russians and the Saudis appearing on Mon, Tue, or Wed.

in

I looked at the previous version and didn’t see any bids in the thread.

Is it done via PM?

No, there is a daily bid thread where people post their bids.

I'm in again.

I'll join if there is still a spot.

sure thing! The more the merrier

Minor request for Day 2-4: Can we end at 6:30 PM Central (instead of 7). Reason is I leave work at 6:30 and have an hour car ride home. So, I will need to be bidding in traffic otherwise :p

Tonight is OK, as I happened to be working until 7.

If there are no objections, we'll move it back to 6:30 Central tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Thanks Cartman

This was like the old days of Ebay :D

As with last time, any side deals should be posted in this thread. Don't have to give the nitty gritty details, just that a deal was made.

For the first side deal, hahnkim and I worked out a deal to split ownership of England 50/50.

I've agreed with hankim to split ownership of Morocco 50/50.

I confirm both these deals.

So sad I forgot about this until now. Will be watching with interest!

HomerSimpson98 and I have agreed on a 50/50 split of Iceland & Nigeria

agreed!

I've sold 25% of Brazil to bhlloy

Yup!

So, for next time we try something like this...is there a way to improve on the betting system? In concept we have bidding open all day, but for entries of any value, all that matters is the last two or three minutes. If there were a more auction-inclined website we could use...even if we had to do things as a proxy... that would be cool.

You mind like a blind auction? I'm not sure how much better that would be.

I will say last World Cup I put in a price-driving bid for England in the morning, assured someone would outbid me. Nobody wound up outbidding me, and I just stuck with them for three harrowing matches.

I’m not sure what I want. Just frustrated that two Cups in a row, I’ve planned to play but came away totally empty handed, largely due to the game structure.

In fantasy league auctions, a new leading bid resets a new clock...I guess we could do that here, too.

Yeah, I understand the frustration. The strategy behind bidding is definitely castrated. I know there's a better way out there. The resetting clock could be a help. Anyone have any novel ideas?

Or maybe have something along the lines of this. Post a one-hour window for closing bids. Then use a random number generator to decide what is the final bid or set of bids of the day.

Here's an out-there idea. Yahoo! runs mock drafts, set up as auctions.

If 10-12 of us signed up for a scheduled mock auction, we could do a real time draft, with everyone using a cheat sheet telling is what NFL players corresponded to what World Cup teams. Someone throws out Michael Crabtree, we all look down at our notes to see that means **Egypt**, and then we use their infrastructure to bid in real time (with live clock, and an extension for each new bid, etc) on those players.

Tedious, and would require everyone to be available for the same time window (a couple of hours?) but it would give us a legit auction for each side.

This was something that I was wanting to do for the auction. But couldn't nail down the mechanics of it. It would involve a neutral party that would keep the closing time secret.

Here are the results from the bidding. The overall pool is $1,147. Here are the payouts:


Here's the bidding broken down by individual



There are a couple of different ways to get the money to me. One is PayPal (emailme at greggowins.com) and I'm also on Venmo (@greggowins). If there is another transfer method you'd like to use, let me know and I'll see what I can do to get on that platform.

The main problem to solve is that, for any auction, it is rational for people to keep their real bids secret until the end. The only real window that matters is the last five minutes.

Some mechanism where the entire auction took place at the same time (will still be shorter than a fantasy football auction) and people always had a chance to outbid the highest bid until there was no more bidding would seem to solve the problems.

There's got to be some website that has auction software that you can pay to be on, right?

Oooof...This result could lead to a potential Brazil v. Germany in the round of 16.

Do it like Hattrick.



Every bid adds another 2-3 minutes to the bid window, so your 6:30 bid is not the end after a higher 6:30 bid because the 6:30 bid extended the time limit.

Today I like Russia more than Trump likes Russia.

Whelp, glad I hedged and got Croatia after this Argentina poop fest.

To my untrained eyes, Croatia seems to be the most impressive up to this point. Having said that, how much is that due to the group they're in? Argentina looks like shit and indifferent.

I’m not sure it is... I’d agree with you and if you look at the midfield and forwards, I’d say you can argue they are one of the top four teams in the tournament. Not as much depth as some other teams maybe, but they are at least well coached which you can’t say about teams like Argentina, France and Belgium.

Nigeria is a pretty good team (just ask Iceland) and Croatia handled them pretty easily too. Croatia was my big sleeper in the World Cup and they have the talent to make a run. A lot depends on matchups, but I think they are one of the top 5 teams at this point.

Ruh roh...

Glad I could donate to the cause :p

I hate the FIFA Fair Play tiebreaker

I hate it too, but happy it worked out for me.

I’m currently on the road with my dad driving to Florida to help my sister and kids move back to Texas. I’ll get the amounts done tomorrow for review, then send the winnings tomorrow evening.

I’ll need to wait 4.5 years to attempt to break even :D

Sorry for the delay. Here is list of winners. Please review and verify. For the winners, let me know how to distribute your winnings. Thanks to everyone who participated!