cheers jpk100, tough one though predicting say Citys lineup, a definate thinker

jasper, I had noticed looking at previous teams that had won weeklies that some win with 2/3 players not even featuring through injury etc meaning a few 0's meaning a seasonal/previous weekly team may still have a chance if they hit the right big point scorers/captain choice
also where do you get that kind of info on how many teams have been entered in certain syndicates?

to play or not to play with my 5-15 teams........................... hmmmmm

When the 5 4 £5 first arose, Sanjaychill had a big panic attack and chucked in another 5,000 teams increasing his entry from 13,000 to 18,000.

Strangely he didn't enter all of his teams last weekend thats obvious but we all think we know why

I'm saying with the liklehood of the seasonal mini 100 grand going to a non tam team( only occupying 44 of the top 100 teams now and none in the top 5) and the increased prize monies on offer for this weekend, as he is still in the red as regards his outlay, he might go mad again and enter another 5,000.

you got to

I believe some of you are now keeping copies of the player list each week for reference. Can one of you clear something up for me? Are the player reference codes the same week after week?

e.g. if John O'Shea is number 254 one week is he number 254 the next week and the week after that and so on?

yep same id for the whole season

This explains how the dubious entries happened IMO.

From the Sanjay&co perspective, the automated system probably isn't programmed to check who is and who isn't available each week; it just picks players from a databse using a ruleset. That database has a record of the player reference numbers, which are constant. They may be clever enough to edit the player database each week to remove players missing that gameweek or they may not. If they are that clever, they forgot to remove Bolton and Fulham, probably because they didn't check the official list and just assumed the game would be included.

From the Sun's perspective, their system isn't programmed to reject invalid (for the gameweek) player reference numbers. The web front-end (manual entry) restricts it for normal entrants but the data-entry subsystem does not for any automated system. By Sanjay&co bypassing the web front-end, that I reckon is the loophole.

Discussion of whether that loophole is being exploited accidentally or on purpose belongs in the Syndicate Banter forum.

How would that explain Luke Young then.

wdt-26-27-player-lists-t83637.html

Fron Sanjay&co's perpspective, he's in their player database and they haven't noticed that he's no longer listed on the web front-end.

From The Sun's perspective, they have a back-end database of all the players that have been available at any point during the season and each has a unique reference number that does not change throughout the season. Sanjay & co have been keeping track of those reference numbers and Luke Young will have a certain number.

When a player like Luke Young gets injured or loaned out or becomes otherwise unavailable, including when their team is not playing in a gameweek, the Sun will mark him as unavailable in their database but they do not delete anyone. When they genereate the web front-end list of players for any gameweek, all unavailable players are excluded.

However, I strongly suspect the back-end data entry subsystem does not understand this "unavailable" flag and happily accepts entries for any player with a valid reference code, including Luke Young.

If true, it's sloppy programming or a design oversight from the Sun team and something they will need to correct but it will take time. They'll need to go through loads of test cycles and other boring due diligence stuff.

we all know the players have codes but what is this back-end data entry subsystem that you are talking about?

I think someone else explained it better before but I'll have a go.

The front-end web entry screen has source code and the list of available players is in that source code. What players you can click on screen is defined by that source code. All the code is doing is filling a hidden form (with player reference codes) that you can't see on screen.

The dataentry subsystem is something running on The Sun servers that accepts data from the hidden form when you press the CONFIRM button. It knows nothing about "unavailable" players, all it understands are valid player reference codes. And that's where the loophole (or mismatch) exists.

What Sanjay is doing is bypassing the click-click-click and directly filling the hidden form. The Sun's dataentry system should be clever enough to know which players are unavailable - and reject any requests containing such players as invalid - but it is not.

Anyway, that's my theory!

Whilst I agree the picking of invalid players is a problem Snout and should be stopped, its nowhere near as big a problem as one particular group using a system to automate the entry of their vast 18,000 teams into WDT every weekend at the push of just one button........ whilst the rest of us have to use the Sun entry screens.

Whatever it is they are doing needs closing down right now. Either you enter manually through the Sun website or you don't enter at all.

Yes it gives them an advantage at the moment but anyone else with the same wherewithal could do it. Therefore I don't look so disparagingly on it and I see the invalid players as more of a problem.

As I recall, the T&C's are not explicit on this so it (automated entry) may be a grey area that needs tightening up.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree at all Snout with "its okay to enter teams this way because others could do it if they were clever enough".

No longer will you need a bit of football knowledge to win at this game, you'll need a masters degree in Software Engineering unless the Sun close down this entry loophole.

The thousands and thousands of other people who enter the Sun game every weekend have no idea how to do what Tam is doing and never will be able to exploit the loophole themselves, so why should they have to try and compete with him on a totally uneven playing field?

This is not just a WDT problem, it also raises question about the initial entry of Tam's 18,000 teams.

Automated? More than likely i'd suggest...... which raises a massive problem going forward for the Sun game.

The maximum number of teams a single person enters is usually bound by one or both of these two factors.

1) Cost
2) Managability/Maintenance (ie TIME)

Realistically, one person can only handle around 200 teams week on week. (i'm speaking from personal experience of both WDT and inital entry/transfer windows)

But with Tam seemingly having a bottomless pit of cash coupled with NO initial entry or week on week manageability/TIME issues to worry about whose to say they won't put 25,000 teams in next season chasing the big 500k & 100k prizes?

Enter them in August at the click of a button - no problem.
Bang them all into Weekend Dream Team - click, no problem.

Should we all even bother trying to compete if thats the case?

Question for you: Would they have put 18,000 teams into the game this season if they had to manually administer them all like the rest of us? No, I don't think so either.......

So the loophole is a problem on allsorts of levels.

Every person who enters the Sun game should have to play by the same rules as everyone else, that includes using the same entry methods for all aspects of the game.

If one group can bypass the "chore" parts of entering the game that everyone else has to bear, how is that fair?


The problem needs addressing and addressing right now. I'm sure most of us don't mind going up against any genuine individual or group and take on their football brains/organisational skills... But they have to be bound to the same team entry/time constraint issues as the rest of us.





Discuss...................

In relation to the above post from Zarch i would like to add.


''IN A NUTSHELL''

How do you work that one out
This isnt a syndicate problem this is a WDT problem
Wasnt something said last week about the sun looking into this ?
Or maybe they are just running scared of Tamspax again like they did before
Whatever the outcome it would be refreshing to have a comment from someone from the Sun rather than just hoping it goes away

Maybe someone should contact D.Watkins or whoever again, with zarchs post attached, personally i think he's got it bang on.

DW knows my feelings on it, which are exactly the same as Zarch. I emailed him a couple of weeks ago with a technical analysis of how I thought they were making their WDT entries. If they can find a way of closing the automation loophole then they may well be able to close it for entering teams and making transfers too, which, as Zarch clearly points out, is an unfair advantage.

To be clear, I may know in theory how Tam has automated his WDT entries, but even with my computing degree and years of website development experience I've not managed to successfully bypass the WDT entry process. I've spent a couple of hours trying various methods in order to narrow down the possibilities, but not once have I got it to work. I'm sure if I had a spare week I could do it myself, but I would be wasting my time as the Sun should be working on closing the loopholes for this season, and more importantly for next season too.

This probably explains why Noah and co bypassed the first few weeks of WDT as it took some time to perfect the automated entry.

Lets face it anyone with 100 or more teams to enter Friday for one chance in 95,000 dreads Fridays as the format manually, is so laborious.

That Tam wants one to believe that he has 18 active syndicate players( several women amongst them) and are all happy to manually sit there and tap in 1,000 teams everyweek, well excuse me whilst i ROTFLMFAO!

What intrigues me most at present, is why last week, Noah didn't enter all of his teams

Have the Sun closed part of the loophole?


He certainly wont be entering new teams this weekend if that is the case.

I reckon 1,000 teams would take the best part of a day to enter manually including a couple of hours sleep.


.

he still entered a few

12988 to be precise

I believe Tam's clan (or whatever they like to be called) are a syndicate. And any such discussion would turn into banter at best, personal abuse at worst. We know this from experience and banging our heads against brick walls for over a year now.

Agreed Suzykins, it would be nice to hear from the Sun.

It's difficult to tell how much work they will need to do to correct the loophole of invalid players. I suspect they're working on it but it will probably need a bit of work on the back-end data entry system and a concomitant one on the web front-end; this makes testing a lot harder and longer.

I understand your position Zarch but I still disagree. Unless automated entry is outlawed in the T&C's or it is slowing down the system for other users, I don't have a problem with it. If someone is clever enough to work out how to do it properly then it's fine by me; it’s a labour saving device. It’s an advantage alright but I cannot see how it’s an unfair advantage. Go and write your own if you think it’s unfair.

On the T&C’s, I think we’ll need to wait until next season to see what they change. On that second point however, we may see some movement from The Sun. I know some people have reported difficulty entering teams at certain times, because of slow response from the website. There may be an innocent cause of this, such as a backup of the database being run, although that’s far from best practice as any serious database should be using log shipping to a passive copy and the backup being run against there (i.e. zero slowdown on the active copy).

An alternative explanation is that an automated system is hammering the web front-end servers with constant requests and this is slowing down the whole system. It may be that the web front-end servers themselves can’t cope with the volume or it may be the application servers or it may be the database servers at the back, or any combination thereof.

If the automated system is to blame, and that’s not yet proven, the Sun has an issue here. If they are to allow automated entries, it cannot be to the detriment of other users as that really is an unfair advantage.

There are ways they can mitigate this; by upping the capacity of the servers to cope with these entries; or introducing some kind of delay mechanism; or they could ban them. Alternatively they could publish a method for the submission of mass entries and control them that way.

If I was seriously attempting to win money from Sun games - and I'm not, I'm just a casual player with 2 teams in a pub league, one I run for a mate - I would probably try and write an automated system like Tam's.

If I did write such a system, I would make damn sure it staggers its requests to the front-end servers so that they can cope with the volume of my requests. I would monitor the amount of time it takes to submit each entry and slow down the rate of entry if the servers show signs of slowing down. That way I wouldn’t be nabbed by The Sun when they investigate why their servers have crawled to a halt. [edit] It would also be plain polite!

good post snout some good points, but...



How would one go about writing one of these then? i don't think my pen will manage it. how would this be fair on the other 99.5% of dream team entrants.
I thought this was the the sun weekend dream team, not the 'sun geek software developing automated system input through loopholes weekend dream team'.

Sounds like an idea for a new game for next year

Sounds more like an old Bob Dylan Song.

Yeah it's geeksville I know but it ain't against the T&C's, not as I understand them. You may argue an automated system is against the spirit of the game but that doesn't mean The Sun has a duty to act. Unlike on the loophole or on the possible degradation of performance to other users, where I feel they do have a duty to act.

And picking players not available to everyone
So because it doesnt say so its ok Nice one snout

You've clearly misunderstood or not read my posts properly. I said the Sun has a duty to act to close the loophole, which is the picking of players not available to everyone. I am clearly saying this is not OK and needs fixing.

The principle of an automated system is a different question and one I don't see as inherently unfair.

Snout… just to pick you up on the "its not specifically against the rules, so its ok" argument….

to use a point Pa made about something else (in another thread)…. there is nothing to say you cant enter an account in your dogs name - so does that mean I can do that?

there is nothing in the rules to say you cant hack into the Sun's database and bypass the payment screen.

There is nothing in the rules to say you cant hack into the database and make transfers to your opponents teams…..


All ridiculous points, i agree, but not specified in the Ts and Cs. Still doesn't make them right though.

Snout, thanks for your excellent posts. I dont understand all the commotions.

1. I dont have a problem with automated entries
2. Any team with invalid players cannot win anyway
3. automated entry makes entering teams easier and faster
4. Nothing in life is fair
5. People with the knowledge to use automated entry and select valid players should not be disqualified.
6. Most people on here would be happy to use the automated entry if they know how to use it. Please dont cry everybody should be using manual. If you dont have the skills to do it, go and hire someone simple.

You've got to speculate to accumulate said Rockefeller

do u reckon they'll do any buy one get one free offers?