With all the talk about league validity & the potential winning leagues been disqualified I was reminded of what happened in the world cup game for smaller stakes
Seems to me it was ok back then for some to question the structure of leagues at the top but now because it could effect other peoples chances there is uproar.
How ironic IF someone who complained back then (about a team that didnt actually win anything) ended up with their own league punished for mis-reading the rules


is-postie-s-league-valid-t74834.html?hilit=ENGLAND BRAZIL LEGENDS

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones......

Searching through leagues reveals some interesting info, but I guess it's all in The Suns hands to stick to their rules, or twist their words, try to avoid compensation pay outs etc etc.

A shame some are invalid, but Dave Watkins may or may not have a big job come end of season.. especially with the biggun being a tinsy £100,000!!

I feel sorry for DW in many ways. It's almost a no-win situation for him and his colleagues when you consider the cunning people will use to try get an unfair edge (to be expected in this day and age).

I think the most important thing is, for each prize category, they have to avoid duplicating the rules.

By stating the rules (for each prize cat) in more than one area of the t's & c's, they're leaving themselves open to abuse by people who know the rules but sniff out the tiniest potential ambiguities. Ammo to whine about (in court if necessary).

So, my advice to them:

For each prize category - only state the rules governing them in one area.

Obviously some rules are generic (eg. the budget) and should just be stated the once. Again, obviously, the software prevents anyone from pulling a fast one with the budget. But for some elements of the game, the software can't realistically be expected to prevent attempts at manipulating the rules by unscrupulous players.

Shame really, as it's being spoilt by both players and organiser incompetence.

I think this has been said a million times before though, eh?

Where I disagree on what you are saying Neil, is, I don't think for one minute anyone has tried to exploit any ambiguities with the 30 player rule, what has happened is, at some point during the season they have made an error with there league and fallen below the 30 player minimum.

Now having realised the errors, the rules are now being scoured for the so called 'ambiguities' and people are seemingly trying to make out that they played the game with under 30 players because thats what they thought the rule was!!!

All this wont be happening if SDT had removed all invalid leagues after TW1 and TW2 respectively with a simple program. By still showing all these invalid leagues , these people still believe their leagues are valid, giving false hope. If you are not able to see your invalid leagues upto now, then you will definately know you have done something wrong. Looking at the seasonal league table does not reflect the true table really. Who is to blame for this? SDT of course. One way to solve this is to remove them quickly, like I stated in the question poll. Having less than 30 players at all times , gives any league unfair advantage.

The Sun will not remove these leagues Pseudo if they follow their own precedent...I rembember a few years ago, a few fisoers & myself finished 20 odd in the seasonal mini league table. A few weeks later we got confirmation that every mini league bar one was disqualified above us...meaning we ended up receiving 2nd prize

This is getting more interesting. Lots of people are going to be disappointed come end of the season. Why make people wait till the end of the season to let them know their leagues are invalid? thats not fair actually.

Easier for The Sun to check one team in a prize place than every team.

Ashers, they only need to write a code to display only leagues with 30 or more players. Its actually easy to write the code. Imagine non fisoers who dont know whats going on with this rule, then come end of season they get the bad news. Atleast if they know their leagues are not valid now, they can make better changes at TW3.

Maybe with one month to go they should review the top 20 teams as i would expect the winning team to come from there at such a late stage.

Nothing worse than being told after the event when you had, or you believed you had, finished first.

I know that, you know that, but do they know that.

Food for thought

From Dave Watkins.

We are aware of the leagues that won’t meet the criteria to win the overall prize and will look at removing them before the end of the season.

Now that the transfer window has closed we are considering one or two updates so will look at doing this on a staging site to see if it would cause any problems.

Regards,

This conversation is getting as monotonous as the tam bashing.

I don't think it is easy to write some code.
Hence why it hasn't been done.
Its not a binary question, so its not a binary solution. Imagine the court case if a league that was valid was scratched off?!
That's why they check at the end.

There is also talk as if 50% of leagues are invalid, yet it seems we're only actually aware of one.
They're aware, we're aware - we all plan/proceed accordingly.

Maybe if ronny gets some answers to his questions they will confirm their thoughts on the invalid leagues (maybe).

Who's leagues are invalid then?

How do people know they are invalid leagues?

But its not a straight forward case of, does this league have 10 teams - yes. Does this league 2 managers - yes. Has thie league used 30 players - Yes.

There could be 10 teams, 11 teams, 20 teams, or 45 teams.
There could be 10 teams using 20 players or 45 teams and 45 managers and using 29 players. Unlikely, but still a possibility.

Invalidate 100 leagues now, and have 90 lots of hassle/abuse/phone calls/emails.... Or wait till the end of the season and deal with 1 or 2?

Only the top 5 win something don't they?
So odds are, none will beaffected at the end. Worst case scenario, one of them. That's the way it goes - deal with one angry punter IF the situation arises, rather than needlessly fending off 100 angry punters.

Sounds about right.The line of least resistance theory.

For those of us who have not followed this "story".

Who is the manager with the dodgy league?
What rule have they broken?
Does it appear that the contravention of the rule came about due to an oversight or because he was trying to be a "smart alec"?

I think its just guess work or pure speculation.

It has to be an oversight if a league started with 30 players, dropped to 29 players at TW1 and then upped it back to 30 players. If you were trying to be a smart alec you'd not need to stick anywhere near to 30 players at each transfer window. For that reason, it's clear that some people are trying to find a loophole to make their leagues seem valid when deep down they know they have made a mistake and invalidated their league by either poor planning or just an administrative error.

The only reason why The Sun can't just strip out invalid leagues programatically is because they put a tiny bit of vaguery in their rules to allow for the (highly) remote possibility that an unstructured league could come into contention for the seasonal prize. Their reasoning for this vaguery was to allow Joe punter and his plethera of mates to start with a shed load (i.e. 50+) of different players used and then for it to converge purely out of coincidence to using less than 30 players after TW3. This scenario probably happens, but there is simply no way the league average would be enough to challenge for a prize. Structured leagues will always win the seasonal prizes under the current rules of using the total league average.

If a league started with less than 30 players then it would definitely be structured, as 10 teams (minimum required) with just one difference per team (i.e. no duplicate teams - again, required) uses 20 players to start with, so for it to only have a few more differences then there is no doubt that it is structured. If anyone made a mistake and formed a league with 29 players at the cut-off point for the seasonal entries then they could at no point rescue it to make it valid, even if they were to claim it was unstructured, it wouldn't wash. Likewise if a league falls below the 30 player criteria at any point afterwards, it invalidates it for the whole season and it cannot be rectified.

It would be impossible for a league to have 45 teams and use 29 players without either incorporating duplicate teams or to have a specific structured approach to forming the league.