4th August sees a New Season kick off, so I thought a reminder of how the Bankers work..... or in most cases, don't might be useful.
Firstly let's recap how you score points with your guessing.
You get 9 points for getting the score right, plus the number of goals scored in the game, plus bonus points for players scoring more than once and an extra point for a clean sheet.
A 3-0 win, with a player scoring twice is worth 14 points.
Get the score wrong and the result right, you get 2 points (plus the bonus points for scorers and clean sheets), have the correct margin but wrong score, you say 2-0 and it's 3-1, you get 3 points.
That would all be too easy though wouldn't it, so here's the complicated bit coming in for Season 23/24.
For the first time this season, I'm also introducing MINUS points for getting predictions really wrong. So if you predict Spurs will beat Brentford at home, and it's an away win, that will be recorded as a shite prediction, and you're lose points calculated on the goal difference and coefficients. The Brentford 3-1 win at the end of last season would have cost you -2.10 points if you'd said Spurs would win (even more if you'd stuck banker points on it)
Team coefficients will affect all points a team wins, or loses. Every team has a 'handicap' based on where they finished last season. In the Premier League, Arsenal as Champions (oops sorry I wrote this a few weeks before the end of the season), Manchester City as Champions carry a handicap of 1, Luton carry a handicap of 1.58. If City won the game between them, 3-0, and you'd guessed 3-0, then instead of 14 points for that win, the coefficients kick in between City & Luton (1/1.58), and would reduce the 14 points to 8.86 points. If the result had been the other way round, a Luton win by the same margin would be worth 22.12 points.
Let's face it, not many of us would go for the Luton 3-0 option, so the reward is higher. Oh and any points won away from home carry a 10% enhancement (so 0-3 at City would be worth 24.33).
Coefficients work in every game. Including cup games, so if Dagenham & Redbridge (5.35) beat Chelsea (1.39) in the Cup, the increase is huge!!!
And then you can 'Bank' on games if you want to. You don't have to use any, or all of your banker points each week. You can do what you want with them. But you have the option of using 5 points each weekend, to increase your points haul.
There are two Banker options
The Enhanced Banker costs you 1 Point, and doubles any points you win
The Guaranteed Banker costs you 2 Points and trebles any points you win
You can use a combination of the bankers, so 1 Guaranteed and 3 Enhanced, but the total points you spend can't exceed 5.
Get your bankers wrong though, and penalties kick in. Narrowly miss, you go home win and it's a draw, then the penalty will be smaller than getting it completely wrong, and as always, wrong Guaranteed Bankers will be punished harder than wrong Enhanced Bankers.
The points that are deducted will be based on score and result points mentioned above, and the coefficients will also kick in.
Banking on a Man City win over Luton, and Luton winning 3-0 will punish all those that stuck a Blue Moon Guarantee on that game by 22 points!
So should you Bank, or shouldn't you. History has shown previously that if you're careful/prudent/lucky (you delete as appropriate) then banking pays off.
Will it this season......