Sports Pools

[ home | résumé ]

Back in high school, I made a program called Hockey Pool Team Chooser to help me in an online hockey pool. Since then, that program has gone through 3 redesigns, and, in 2005, I began competely re-writing it as Sports Pool Team Chooser. This page records my experience in online sports pools using these programs.

NHL 2005-2006

Sportsnet.ca

Here is a link to the Sportsnet.ca pools

A weekly pool with a constant salary cap of 50 and players costing between 1-10. Two centres, four wingers, three defensemen, and one goalie must be chosen each week. There are over 40,000 active competitors in this pool.

My team is "smozoma," and my friends Kirsten and Samit are "gosensgo2003" and "sams," respectively.

I make picks for Kirsten, since she hasn't been interested in thinking of them this year, and Samit uses my input to select his team.

Kirsten won week 4,
bringing in a t-shirt and hat.

Kirsten's team won week 4 with help from the program, bringing in a nice Sportsnet prize pack (Roots T-Shirt and a hat) thanks in part to 10 points by Eric Staal and 9 by Dany Heatley.

Samit has been playing risky, which occasionally pays off, but, in the long run appears not to work.

Total Points
user \ week#	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23
gosensgo2003	27	50	60	153	182	208	241	270	294	333	368	388	431	473	506	535	572	602	632	661	707	754	800
smozoma	19	43	81	133	158	190	232	260	282	312	349	371	414	454	484	513	548	578	611	641	689	735	786
sams	15	36	54	101	128	161	205	231	250	268	305	326	363	392	429	458	489	512	533	560	592	631	676
1st	48	77	112	157	192	223	261	296	317	356	401	425	461	494	528	549	589	615	648	679	725	760	806

Points Trailing 1st
user \ week#	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23
gosensgo2003	21	27	22	4	10	15	20	26	23	23	33	37	30	21	22	14	17	13	16	18	18	6	6
smozoma	29	34	31	24	34	33	29	36	35	44	52	54	47	40	44	36	41	37	37	38	36	25	20
sams	33	41	58	56	64	62	56	65	67	88	96	99	98	102	99	91	100	103	115	119	133	129	130

Rank (^ = greater than 10,000, red = failure to improve rank)
user \ week#	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23
gosensgo2003	3522	7904	332	5	14	40	89	204	133	51	72	104	35	26	29	16	11	14	13	14	7	5	2
smozoma	^	^	2571	703	2078	1214	470	894	812	947	858	812	359	249	325	199	169	179	134	147	54	25	13
sams	^	^	^	^	^	^	9319	^	^	^	^	^	^	^	9424	8207	7910	8970	^	^	^	9828	8381

Frustrations

The pool is frustrating at times, as unexpected things happen. Detroit was very good at the start of the season, so Manny Legace was a good goalie to pick. However, when Samit and I picked him in both weeks 5 and 8, he managed to get injured in his first or second game in both of those weeks.

Sometimes players are doing well, so you pick them, but then they get you next to no points. I don't really mind that; it's bound to happen. What I DO mind is when the week AFTER you pick them, they go on a tear and are voted Offensive Player of the Week for scoring 7 or 8 points in 3 games. I'm looking at you, Sean Horcoff (EDM) and Henrik Sedin (VAN).

NHL.com

I barely pay attention to the NHL.com pool, however, I'm doing pretty well in it. I don't know how many people are in this pool, but I've been in the top 500 for the past 14 weeks, peaking at 32nd before having a spell of bad luck. I've also forgotten to make picks 4 times in this pool.

I haven't even set up the program to score statistics according to the NHL.com scheme. The sportsnet.ca pool awards points just for goals and assists, but the NHL.com pool rewards goals, assists, shots, penalty minutes, plus/minus, power play points, etc). I just use my sportsnet.ca setup. If I had set up an NHL.com pool in the program, I'd probably be doing even better, but the prize (not even 'prizes') is lame, so I didn't bother.

Rank
user \ week#	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27
Blackbox	10210	1099	1568	550	218	230	184	670	611	426	333	207	232	54	32	123	120	215	306	405	412	439	233

NHL 2003-2004

Sportsnet.ca

Here is a link to the Sportsnet.ca pools

In 2003-2004, I finished 487th out of over 40,000 competitors. In the first 7 weeks, I lost 54 points on the leader (about 2 weeks' worth of points) and fell to 8254th position, but over the last 18 weeks of the season, I was up 2 points on the winner and slowly and steadily climbed into the top 500. At the start of that period, I had modified my stats-collecting program to weight the stats to favour players on hot streaks.

Graph of number of points trailing leader. Dropping from -12 to -65 in week 11, then slowly rising to -52 by the end of the season.

Relatively constant from week 7 to the end of the season

Graph showing my ranking steadily improve after the 7th week of the season, from 8254th to 487th

Graph showing my ranking steadily improve after the 7th week of the season, from 8254th to 487th

From week 8 to 26, only 3 times did I fail to improve
my rank, climbing from 8254th to 487th.

NHL 1999-2001

Smallworld

The very first week I started using v1.0 of Hockey Pool Team Chooser, I went from 10th to 1st in my Smallworld hockey pool group thanks to two hat tricks by Jaromir Jagr, whom I had originally believed I could not afford. I went on to completely dominate my division for the next 2 years. In the Smallworld pool, you buy and sell players, and their costs increase and decrease based on demand. Beginning with 50 million dollars, I could easily increase my salary cap above 100 million to the point where I could have any player I wanted.

[ home | employment ]