It's just under a week until the 2024 Festival kicks off on Tuesday 12th March, it's time to get this year's tipping competition rolling again. The previous 16 editions have all been really good fun, always competitive with a healthy turnout each day.
Although last year's competition went to the final race on Friday, Aedge659 (AKA 'The Edge') deservedly won it in style. This was Edge's 1st Cheltenham victory and he will defend it with his tipping life this year I'm sure. Or can one of the long-time perennial challengers grab their first major? 'BoRed' or 'Goalrushatgoodison' spring to mind as a couple of the sound tippers not to win one of these things.
Anyway...On to the rules...
The scoring for the game is quite straightforward and the same as the other competitions (The Aintree comp is very slightly different).
Pick one horse per race on each of the 4 Race days. Points are accumulated as follows depending on where your selection is placed.
Winner - 15 points
Second - 10 points
Third - 7 points
Fourth - 4 points
Points are only awarded for places conforming to the bookie's industry standard (e.g. 2 places for races with less than 8 runners, 3 places for 8 or more runner races and 4 places for 16+ runner HANDICAP races). I appreciate some bookies pay out on 5,6,7 or even 8 places on certain races but these are purely promotions on behalf of the individual bookies and will NOT apply to this competition.
To avoid any confusion over the above, points will be awarded for the places specified on the results page of the Sporting Life Website
https://www.sportinglife.com/racing/resultsBonus points are available as follows. Please note, that there are now even more bonus points for winners and placed horses at
100/1 and over.
Winner 100/1 and over = 30 Bonus Points
Winner 33/1 and over = 20 bonus points
Winner 16/1 and over = 15 bonus points
Winner 8/1 and over = 5 bonus points
Placed horses 100/1 and over - 15 Bonus Points
Placed horses 33/1 and over - 10 Bonus points
Placed horses between 16/1 and 33/1 - 5 Bonus points
NOTE: A horse cannot gain both win and place bonus points in any one race.On each day of racing, you must also pick ONE NAP horse. If your NAP selection WINS, then you receive DOUBLE points. The double point bonus may encourage people to try and NAP a more risky selection at longer odds and therefore gain more points. It also gives people further down the leaderboard a chance to move up with a bit more of a risk/reward tactic.
So to clarify the scoring and NAP bonus - if you picked a 10/1 winner you will get 20 points as standard (15 + 5). If you made this your NAP of the day you would receive double and get 40 points. Napping a 33/1 winner would get you 70 Points (15 + 20 x 2). Napping an odds-on favourite would gather no odds bonus and get you the standard 15 points for a winner then doubled. (15 x 2 = 30). And so on.
I will provide a daily points tally and overall leaderboard each evening in this thread and will also update the tables on this OP.
Important info:
Entries are to be posted in this thread BEFORE the first race each day. (you can also post the night before if you wish).
Any Non-Runners in your selections will be replaced by the SP Favourite. In the event of Jt Favs, you will be allocated the first one alphabetically.
If you don't think you've got the time to make any proper selections on one of the days at least try and post something along the lines of "Fav every race".
NEW TO THE CHELTENHAM COMPETITON - If for any day's racing you feel you won't have time to post your full selections then simply post the words "auto pick" and I will use a random generator to select a horse for each race that day and a random NAP. I will then post the selections for the player in this thread before the first race starts.
**Anyone with edits on their original post AFTER the start of the FIRST race each day, will void ALL their selections for that day!!! No exceptions**
Any player who neglects to post entries for any 2 of the 4 festival days will be removed completely from the competition. NO EXCEPTIONS. This rule allows players to miss posting selections for any one day and also allows new players to join the competition a day late (Wednesday).
Please feel free to post/edit your selections right up to the time of the first race each day or maybe even post your whole week's selections in one go. (reminder: NRs will always be replaced by SP Fav)
Again, if you're pressed for time to get your entry in, I'll even accept an entry posted in the thread consisting of random numbers eg: 8,5,11,9,3,2, or maybe even 'number 2 every race'. If any of these number selections don't figure in the race you will still get the SP favorite and a chance to score points.
Late selections will be accepted on any day but obviously, only the selections for the races that remain at the time of posting will score points.
***In the event of the leaders being tied for the lead after the final race on Friday. The overall winner will be determined by the number of winners picked, if still tied then it will go to 2nd places, then 3rd places, and so on until we have a winner. If the players cannot be split we will have a playoff on the earliest UK meeting on the Monday immediately following the festival***Any questions about the point scoring or selections please feel free to ask in this thread or drop me a PM.
No prizes I'm afraid - just the glory of being crowned 'RAWK Champion Cheltenham Tipster 2024' and getting their name inscribed on the magnificent 'virtual' trophy (as seen below)
Hall of Fame
