Take note, two programming items have been updated today on the site
1) The Wagering System
Judging from the votes and feedback from those who have participated so far on our
help decide the future of the wagering system poll it is apparent that a large portion of folks would like to leave the current wagering system in play somehow. To help make this current system a little less abusable we have added some enforced "guidelines" to the programming today. Not including those who attempted to abuse the system, and without actually counting last event's wagers, my gut tells me that over 90% of all legit wagers already fall into these new guidelines, so really there should not be a huge adjustment aside from reading the new explanitory text and seeing the live pick percentages on the "My Fantasy Wagers" page.
Rather than enforcing a set money line which may be slightly confusing to some (especially in the player vs player environment currently employed) we are using the user pick statistics from the
Event Picks & Points page to classify fights as having a "Strong Favorite", a "Heavy Favorite", or neither.
A fight is considered a
Strong Favorite fight when 85% or more of the site's users have selected one fighter as the winner. In a match with a
Strong Favorite there is a minimum 2:1 ratio that must be followed, meaning for every $1 wagered on the underdog a minimum of $2 must be wagered on the Strong Favorite. A fight with a Strong Favorite may not excede a 6:1 (favorite$ to underdog$) ratio.
A fight is considered to have a
Heavy Favorite when 95% or more of the site's users have selected one fighter as the winner. In this scenario there is a minimum 3:1 ratio that must be followed, meaning for every $1 wagered on the underdog a minimum of $3 must be wagered on the Heavy Favorite. A fight with a Heavy Favorite may not excede a 10:1 (favorite$ to underdog$) ratio.
An example: for our recent UFC event 97% of site users picked CroCop to defeat Eddie Sanchez. Pretending that this system was in place at that time... if you wanted to wager
$10 on Eddie Sanchez your opponent's wager would have to be at least
$30 (3:1) but not more than
$100 (10:1) for the programming to accept and store your wager.
For all fights that do not have either a Strong or Heavy Favorite we have implimented a 3:1 ratio "ceiling". This is done to prevent some of the bets we saw where a user would wager $1 to a secondary account's $100.
As said before, most of the legit wagers already fall into these new guidelines, so really there should not be a huge adjustment for most of us. Any wagers that have already been placed will be "grandfather'd" into this new system and left as they sit (unless they're manipulated wagers, then they'll be canned same as before).
We also realize that as people make their picks for upcoming events that a fight may change from having a Heavy, Strong, or no favorite at all. As long as the wager you place is legit at the time it was made, it will stick and not be affected by any changes in a fight's pick percentages. There is also a new piece of programming which will run on the server on a nightly basis which will delete any pending wagers that have not been accepted or rejected for more than 48 hours. This will keep people from having their funds tied up and having to back out of a wager manually. This will also keep people from trying to get in a potentially good wager, then approve it at the last minute if the wager has changed from one of the new aforementioned statuses to another more desirable status.
2) Mad props yo
We have added a new forum "reputation" system, in which you can give "props" to fellow forum members when they make (what you consider to be) a good post. Everyone's "props" count and "props" level can now be seen by their username in the forums. There are limits in place on giving props to one individual repeatedly and on the overall amount of props you can give out... so save them for when you really do want to give someone "props" for something good!
To view any "props" you've received, click the link at the top of the "My Account" page that says "My Received Props".
We've gotten a little behind on adding some of the other new features that we mentioned last week due to the time spent on items pertaining to UFC67 and these other site updates... but stay tuned, we'll be getting to them sooner or later
Edited to add
item 3)
The Fight Network has confirmed that Antonio "little Nog" Nogueira will be fighting Rameau Sokoudjou at Pride 33.
