Margin prediction

Margin prediction asks participants for more than the winner: they enter how many points, goals or runs the result will be decided by. How close they get is worth points.

The scoring curve

A margin is worth a margin weight when it is called exactly, and loses one point for every unit of error:

points = margin weight - |predicted margin - actual margin|, never below zero

The weight defaults to 3 and can be set anywhere from 0 to 100. At a weight of 3, an exact call scores 3, out by one scores 2, out by two scores 1, and out by three or more scores nothing. Set the weight to 10 and the same tip is worth 10, 9, 8, and so on down to zero at ten points of error.

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Note

A weight of 0 collects a number from every participant and pays nothing for it, which reads as a broken competition rather than a design choice. If you do not want margins scored, turn margin scoring off rather than zeroing the weight.

Wider bands suit a sport that swings. An AFL match decided by 40 points is ordinary, so a weight of 3 pays almost nobody: set it high enough that a good guess is rewarded.

Bonus mode and standalone mode

Mode	What it pays	Default
Bonus	Margin accuracy rides on top of a correct winner pick. Tip the wrong team and the margin is worth nothing, however close it was.	Yes
Standalone	Margin accuracy is its own award, paid whether or not the winner was picked.	No

Standalone is the only mode that can put points on an incorrect tip. Because of that it is off unless you set it, and it is only available on sports whose results carry a margin. A competition that has never asked for it will not start paying incorrect tips because of a platform update.

Two things standalone does not change:

• A wrong pick still reads as incorrect on the leaderboard and in the participant’s history.
• A wrong pick still breaks a perfect round, even when its margin was paid.

Standalone replaces the margin penalty rather than stacking with it.

Which sports support margins

Margins	Sports
Supported	Soccer, AFL, AFLW, NRL, Rugby, Basketball, NBA, NFL, Baseball, Hockey, Handball
Not supported	Cricket, Tennis, Golf, Formula 1, MMA, Volleyball

On a sport with no margin, standalone mode is refused rather than run: a mode that can only ever award zero is a scoring bug wearing a setting.

Margin as a competition type

Margin is one of the competition types in the create-competition wizard, alongside Tipping and Brackets. Fantasy is not open yet. Choosing it gives you a competition where the margin is the point rather than a decoration on a tipping comp.

In a Margin competition, participants enter a margin on every fixture in the round, not only the tie-breaker game. That is the whole premise of the format, so it is not something you scope to selected fixtures.

Setting it up

1. Admin → Competitions → Create, choose Margin (or create a Tipping competition and enable margin scoring on it)
2. Set points per pick and the margin weight in the Scoring section
3. Pick bonus or standalone in Competition → Advanced

Changing the mode or the weight writes a new version of the competition’s ruleset. Rounds already scored keep the rules they were scored under.

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Warning

The margin weight is a scoring rule, not a display setting. Save it before the first round locks: a competition that collects margins under one weight and pays them under another will not agree with itself when a participant checks their history.

Margin scoring and the margin tie-break are different things

The leaderboard tie-break also uses the word margin, and it is a separate feature. It ranks tied participants by their cumulative margin error on the tie-breaker fixture, and it awards no points at all. A participant who enters no margin on that fixture is given the sport’s default so the tie-break still has a number to work with.

Turning margin scoring on does not change the tie-break, and turning it off does not remove it. See Tiebreakers.

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Note

Fanzava uses the final score differential at full time, including extra time in sports where it applies. Half-time and quarter-time scores are not considered.