The Worldwide Standings scoring system awards an upset bonus for the biggest
upset that a user correctly forecasts in each of the first four rounds, and
employs the following Upset Multipliers:
First Round Upset Multiplier: 1
Second Round Upset Multiplier: 2
Third Round Upset Multiplier: 4
Fourth Round Upset Multiplier: 8
Tiebreakers: In the event of a tie score at the end of the
tournament, the following tiebreakers will be used:
1st tiebreaker: User who is "closest to the pin" with the final score of
the championship game. Only users who correctly forecast the tournament
champion are eligible for this tiebreaker. Tournament runner-up does not matter
in the context of this tiebreaker.
2nd tiebreaker: Total score in the 1st round.
3rd and final tiebreaker: Total score in the 2nd round.
If the tie isn't broken after these three tiebreakers are applied, the users
shall be declared to have tied.
Maximum Scoring: In addition to keeping track of your overall
score, your "Maximum" score (displayed in the Max column in the
scoreboard table of the Main Page) will also be tallied.
Your Maximum score will be highest at the BEGINNING of the tournament.
As the Tournament progresses, your Maximum score will decrease every time you
incorrectly forecast a game
Here are some examples of how an incorrect pick affects your Maximum score
Example 1: If you incorrectly forecast a team to win in the first round
but have that same team losing in the second round, you will only lose Maximum
points for the incorrect first round forecast.
Example 2: If the team you picked to win the National Championship loses
in the first round, then your Maximum will go down not only for the incorrect
first round prediction, but also for every subsequent round that is now known
to be an incorrect forecast. If this happens, you will lose Maximum
points equal to sum of the number of points that the subsequent games are
worth. In this example, if the team you picked to win the championship
loses in the first round, your Maximum (according to the default scoring
system) will decrease by (10+20+40+80+160+240)=550 points! Avoid doing
this--it's not good.
At the end of the tournament, your Maximum score will be equal to your Total
score.
The Maximum score is sensitive to your Pool's Upset Multiplier,
so it is possible (and in fact quite likely) that individual Maximums will be
slightly different in Pools that award bonus points for upsets. A user
with a larger Maximum at the start of the tournament (i.e. before any games
have been reported) has picked "bigger" upsets than a user with a smaller
Maximum score. It's up to you to determine how best to utilize this.