Lock policies and late tips
A fixture’s lock time is the deadline for tipping it. Before the lock, a participant can submit and change their tip; after it, the tip is fixed. What happens to a participant who never tipped the fixture at all is decided by the competition’s late-tip policy.
For the participant’s view of a tipping competition, see tipping on fanzava.com.
When a fixture locks
Section titled “When a fixture locks”Every fixture locks on its own. A round with games on Friday night and Saturday afternoon stays open for the Saturday games after the Friday game has started, and each game closes at its own time.
- The lock is at the scheduled start by default. Each fixture’s lock time is worked out from its scheduled start time and the sport’s lock setting. For AFL, for example, the lock is at the bounce.
- A two-minute grace period follows it. A tip submitted in the two minutes after the lock is still accepted, so a participant tipping at the last moment is not turned away by a slow connection. A fixture’s page shows the countdown (“Tipping closes in”) and the grace period beside it.
- A fixture that is not scheduled cannot be tipped. Tipping is open only while the fixture is still scheduled, so a match that has been postponed or cancelled closes straight away.
- A moved kickoff moves the lock. Fixture times come from the sports data feed. When the feed changes a start time, the fixture’s lock time is recalculated from the new start the next time the schedule syncs.
The lock is enforced by the platform when the tip is saved, not by the page, so a tip sent after the grace period is refused even from a tab that has been open since before the lock.
What a lock freezes
Section titled “What a lock freezes”Once a fixture locks, everything attached to the tip on it is fixed:
- the pick itself
- a joker placed on it (it cannot be moved off a locked fixture, or onto one)
- a confidence rating or rank
- a margin prediction
Other fixtures in the round are unaffected and stay open until their own locks.
The late-tip policy
Section titled “The late-tip policy”The late-tip policy decides what a participant gets for a fixture they did not tip before it locked. You choose it in the Scoring section of the create-competition wizard, under Late tip policy.
| Policy | What happens to a missed fixture |
|---|---|
| No tip recorded | Nothing. The fixture scores nothing and is not filled in. |
| Auto-assign home team | The participant is given a tip on the home side. |
| Auto-assign away team | The participant is given a tip on the away side. This is what the wizard selects for a new competition. |
| Zero points | The fixture is filled in and locked at zero points, whatever the result. |
Once a fixture’s deadline has passed, including the grace period, the platform checks it every five minutes and applies the policy to each participant with no tip on it.
How an auto-pick scores
Section titled “How an auto-pick scores”An auto-pick made by Auto-assign home team or Auto-assign away team is a real pick, judged against the result like any other. It is marked as automatic and late, so:
- a correct auto-pick earns the competition’s auto-pick value rather than the points for a correct tip. The auto-pick value is 1 point unless the competition’s scoring rules set it otherwise, and in confidence ladder mode an auto-pick has no rank, so it scores nothing;
- a late-tip penalty set in the competition’s scoring rules applies to it;
- it is never a joker, and it has no confidence rating.
A Zero points auto-pick is worth nothing even if the side it names wins, it carries no late penalty, and a round containing one never pays the perfect round bonus.
Choosing between them is a question of what a missed deadline should cost. No tip recorded and Zero points give nothing for a missed game. The auto-assign policies give the participant a chance of points for a game they forgot, which keeps someone who missed one deadline in touch with the leaderboard.
Motorsport
Section titled “Motorsport”A race has no home or away side. In a motorsport competition, every policy other than No tip recorded assigns the driver starting last on the grid. A race whose grid has not been set yet gets no auto-pick until qualifying has been classified.
Cancelled and postponed fixtures
Section titled “Cancelled and postponed fixtures”A fixture the feed marks as cancelled or postponed is voided:
- every tip on it scores nothing, and none of them counts as a wrong tip;
- it does not count toward or against the perfect round bonus;
- the other fixtures in the round score as normal.
Reminding participants before the lock
Section titled “Reminding participants before the lock”The surest way to reduce missed tips is a reminder. Open the competition from Admin → Competitions, then select Reminder timing to set when tip reminders go out:
- the Primary reminder, between 4 and 72 hours before the round’s first lock;
- the Final reminder, between 30 and 240 minutes before the round’s first lock.
Reset to defaults restores the timing for the competition’s sport. A participant whose only pick for a fixture is an auto-pick is still treated as not having tipped, so an auto-pick never silences their remaining reminders.