Game 51 - Final Report

Portugal - France
Going into this Final match of the Tipster, the top of the table looked like this:
245 - Ines
196 - Andy
191 - Joris

The Final of the Tipster Cup was between Andy and Anne.

The match report itself is brief: everybody tipped France to win; everybody was wrong. The only person to gain any points was Tino, who tipped the closest time - out by 31 minutes, but closer than anybody else.

Usually, the finale of the Tipster is very close. In previous years, winners have been decided by one goal in the Final.
For the 2014 Tipster, Paul tipped Germany to beat Argentina 2-1, while Ben tipped the Germans to win 2-0... a correct Score for Ben would have won him the Tipster, but Paul's correct Margin was enough to crown him winner of the 2014 Tipster.
This year was slightly different: despite languishing in 10th place after Game 5, Ines climbed to 1st place by Game 16, and held onto the top spot for the remaining 35 games.

Congratulations to Ines for winning the Tipster League!
She won by a far greater margin than any previous Tipster winner: 49 points ahead of her nearest rival.
The Tipster Cup ended in a draw, so well done Andy and Anne for their Cup success.

The Winner's Curse continues, with 2014 Champion Paul scoring just 167 points:
- Franz won the 2006 Tipster, but finished 5th in 2008
- Ben won the 2008 Tipster, but finished 7th in 2010
- Mark won the 2010 Tipster, but finished 12th in 2012
- Alex won the 2012 Tipster, but finished 19th in 2014
- Paul won the 2014 Tipster, but finished 9th in 2016.

Excluding the vanishing act by Richie and Mark, the prize pot is 88% full, and I haven't given up on the remaining 12%. I'll contact the winners directly to arrange transferring the prize money.
Additionally, I'd like to say a special thank you to Ralph, who generously donated twice (and no, not by mistake) to help fill the prize pot. :-)

Tips for the last game, and the Final Table Standings, are in the posts below, as well as Part II of the Statipstics.

That concludes the 2016 Tipster - I hope you've enjoyed it, despite the delays and hiccups. If I run a Tipster for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, I will be in touch.....

Thanks for playing!

Final Tipster Scoreboard

Rank	Name	Points		Rank	Name	Points		Rank	Name	Points
1	Ines	245		8	Anne	168		15	Craig	124
2	Andy	196		9	Paul	167		16	Simon	74
3	Joris	191		10	Robert	160		17
4	Jim	183		11	André	156		18
5	Tino	176		12	Ralph	146		19
6	Soeren	174		13	Alex	145		20
7	Ben	171		14	Axel	134		21

Game 51 Tips: Portugal - France

Portugal - France					Points
Name	Score	Scorer	Time		Points	Running Total
Alex	x:x	x	999		0	145
André	x:x	x	999		0	156
Andy	1:2	Antoine Griezmann	42		0	196
Anne	1:2	Olivier Giroud	43		0	168
Axel	1:2	Olivier Giroud	43		0	134
Ben	0:2	Antoine Griezmann	45		0	171
Craig	1:2	Dimitri Payet	51		0	124
Ines	1:2	Antoine Griezmann	21		0	245
Jim	0:2	Antoine Griezmann	32		0	183
Joris	1:2	Antoine Griezmann	35		0	191
Mark	x:x	x	999		0	0
Paul	x:x	x	999		0	167
Ralph	x:x	x	999		0	146
Richie	x:x	x	999		0	16
Robert	0:2	Antoine Griezmann	50		0	160
Simon	x:x	x	999		0	74
Soeren	1:2	Nani	24		0	174
Tino	0:1	Blaise Matuidi	78		3	176

Statipstics - part ii

Times
Joris failed to tip the closest Time throughout the Tipster, despite tipping every single game. Lucky in love, unlucky in Cards. And Tipsters. And country of birth. And... actually, quite a few things.
Robert was the best at tipping the closest Time (winning in 7 matches), but never tipped the exact Time.
Ines achieved 3 exact Times.

On average throughout the Tipster, Simon was the closest to the correct Time: just 23.8 minutes wrong on average.
Despite this, he only tipped the actual closest Time in 2 matches.
In contrast, Tino was on average the furthest from the correct Time: 34.8 minutes wrong on average.
Despite this, he managed to tip the closest Time in 5 matches.
That shows how irrelevant averages can be.

Scores and Margins
Ines achieved 10 perfect scores.
Alex and Andre did this 8 times.
Axel only achieved this once (Switzerland - Poland)

Ines achieved 8 correct Margins, Tino achieved 7.
Andre tipped the correct result 18 times (5 points each). A goal here, a goal there, and Andre could have finished in the top three.

Everybody tipped the correct first Scorer at least once. Ben and Joris both tipped the correct Scorer 8 times.

Points per Tip
Ines average 4.80 points per tip, which was fewer than Alex, with 4.83. If Alex had tipped all 51 matches and maintained that average, his (theoretical) total would have been 247 points; Ines won the tipster with 245 points.
Instead, Alex finished in 13th place with 145 points, which shows that theory isn't as much use as actually tipping and scoring points.
On the other hand, one person did tip every game, yet averaged just 2.63 points per tip. I won't mention that person's name. ;-)

Being Right...
Simon chose the right winner 8 times from the 27 he tipped, a success rate of 30%. In other words, he was wrong in 19 matches, or 70% of his total.
Joris was right 26 times; Soren 25 times; Andy and Paul 24; Andre, Jim and Tino 23 times.
Unsurprisingly, champion Ines was right (either correct Score, correct Margin, or correct result) the most times, in 31 out of 51 matches.

And on the topic of being right... Simon used the correct password for 4 of his Tips. :-)

Tipster Cup Final

Tipster Cup

The Final of the Tipster Cup took place between:
Andy v Anne

It was a very close match.

Andy tipped France to win 2-1, with Griezmann scoring in the 42nd minute.
Anne tipped France to win 2-1, with Giroud scoring in the 43rd minute
(Coincidentally, Axel's tip was identical to Anne's).

In the end, Portugal won, and both Andy and Anne finished with zero points: a 0-0 draw.

Usually in the Cup, a draw means I look to the previous round to determine the winner: Anne scored 13 points in the Semi-Finals, while Andy scored 10.
However, for the Final, a draw is a draw, and the Tipster Cup prize money will be shared equally between Andy and Anne.

Game 50 Report

Germany - France
Some people are more upset about Brexit than others. After taking penalties like England last weekend, Germany decided to defend like England as well last night.
Of the seven Germans in this Tipster, three tipped against their home country, but only Andy earned 10 points for tipping 2-0 French victory. Five other people tipped a win for France, and collect 5 points each.
Ben and Tino tipped top-scorer Griezmann to score the first goal, while Ben also tipped the exact time.

Statipstics - part i

Here are some Tipster statistics ("statipstics") for the curious or bored...

Tips
Andre, Axel, Ben, Joris and Soren tipped every single game.
Excluding Pol-Por, Paul and Robert also tipped every game, while Tino joined lated, but then tipped every game.
That's an impressive effort for 51 matches over 4 weeks, so well done to those eight people.

Of the 51 matches, 12 were tipped by all 17 participants.
The least frequent tipper was Simon (missed 24/51 matches).

Games
France - Albania yielded the most points: 140 in total.
Eight people tipped the correct Score in this game.

We failed to tip the correct Score in 20 out of 51 matches (I told you it's a game of luck!)
The fewest points came from Germany - Poland: 0 points.
Next worse was Czech Republic - Turkey with 11 points.

16 people tipped the correct outcome (either correct Score, correct Margin or correct Result) in Poland - N. Ireland, France - Albania, and N. Ireland - Germany.

The game with the most number of correct results was when 14 people tipped Germany to beat Northern Ireland.

Scorers and Times
Eight people correctly tipped Bale to score the first goal for Wales against Slovakia.
Three people tipped the joint-closest time in Czech Republic - Croatia.

Goals
46 goals were tipped in 2 matches: England - Russia (31 for England, 15 for Russia) and Croatia - Portugal (26 for Croatia and 20 for Portugal).
The fewest goals were tipped for Iceland - Hungary (8 and 11, respectively).
Nobody tipped Iceland to score a goal against Portugal (with 35 goals tipped for the Portuguese), but the biggest delta was N. Ireland - Germany, with 1 goal tipped for the Irish and 39 tipped for the Germans.

Cock-ups
This was the most error-strewn Tipster in a decade of running Tipsters. :-(
I made at least 3 significant mistakes, and those were just the ones I noticed.

But I wasn't alone... many people managed to spell their own name wrong at least once. ;-)
Multiple people made mistakes with their password. Simon got his password wrong so many times that I actually changed my file to accept his wrong password as the right one. :-)

And of course, Ronaldo completely missed the ball on many occasions. :-)