- Players are added by going into the MAKE PICKS option.
- To add players, go into "Make Picks", and it will ask for the userid.
- To initially get into the system, the player uses the INITIAL password that you have set up for your football pool.
(You can modify this in "Modify Football Pool").
- If they are new, they just "make up" a user id. Then they give the "initial password" (that you have set up). (NOT the game-runner password, but the "initial" password). It will then ask them to set up their own personal passord.
- If you want to add players yourself, just go to "make picks" and sign in as them. Then, let them know the password you chose.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
- Note: in college pools, you have to put in your own games and scores. We only do that for the NFL games currently.
- In "Modify Pool", go to "advanced options" and uncheck the "use existing NFL games" box.
- Next, go to the "Game Runner Menu" and select "Add Extra Games". This is how you put in the college games you want to use for the week.
- Make sure your game numbers are in order (1, 2, 3, 4... 16, 17, etc).
- After the pool is closed (use "Close Pool" option, or auto-close), you go to "Modify Extra Games" to put in the scores.
- Then go to "Calculate Winners" to update your overall (year-to-date) stats.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
- A roll-your-own pool means you get to pick and choose your own mix of NFL and/or college games, and have your own point spreads.
- This is an "advanced" feature so don't try it unless you do some experimentation and sure you are comfortable with it
- To do the roll-your-own, set the "use existing NFL games?" option to NO on the advanced options of the pool setup screen
- You will then do a "pull games" to pull the NFL games you want
- You can do an "add extra games" to add any specific college games you want
- You can then do a "modify extra games" to modify the point spreads to your liking
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
You can change a players picks by signing in as them and making the change. To find the players password, use the "update players" program on the game-runner menu (in "list" mode).
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Point spreads are updated as of Tuesday night at 9:00PM. If you have a personal page, you can update your
own point spreads by using the "Override Point Spreads, Override Tie Breaker, or Delete Certain Games" option.
You have this ability because with the personal page, your system is in it's own database, so changing your spreads
doesn't affect anyone else.
If you are in the "communal" system, you either have to live with the spreads as of Tuesday 9PM, or you
can do a "roll-your-own" pool in which you put in your own games/spreads: in that case you are in total control
of when spreads are updated.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
A survivor pool is one in which people are ELIMINATED after missing, usually, just one pick.
So a normal scenario would be something like this: everyone picks one team each week, but
cannot re-use that team ever again. As soon as they miss one, they're out. The game
goes on until there's just one person left. To set this up do the following:
- Set up your new football pool ("Add Football Pool")
- Go to advanced options and set MAXIMUM PICKS to 1
- In advanced options, set PICK TEAMS ONLY ONCE to YES
- In advanced options, set Players are eliminated after missing ___ picks to 1
Of course, some survivor pools vary: You might have to pick more than one team a week, and
you might be eliminated after missing some other number of games
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
- Go to http://www.castle64.com
- Click on the "Setup New Football Pool" menu option
- Enter your player password. This is the the password new players will use to initially get into the pool. For example, "football".
- Enter your game runner password. This is the password that you will use to do game runner functions such as modifying player scores, opening/closing the pool, etc.
- Enter your email address.
- Check the the "use point spreads?" box if you want to use point spreads.
- Enter a page name for your personal page. For example, if your pool is "Joe's Tool and Die Pool", the page could be "joes_tool.htm".
- Hit the "Create new football pool" button
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
"n/a" means "not available": the player didn't make his picks!
"c/s" means "can't show": the pool is still open so you can't see the other guy's picks!
(note: you can allow people to see other players picks before the pool is closed using configuration options)
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
On your game runner menu, go to "Update Players". In that program, there is an option to
delete the players. So, in our example pool, you would do this:
- Go to http://www.castle64.com/joespool.htm
- Go to "Game Runner Menu" link
- Click on the "Update Players" link
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
You add in a deleted player the same way new players are added: you go into "Make Picks" and
sign in as him. Note: if you delete a player, his picks are NOT deleted! So by signing in as
him, it will re-create his player entry, and his picks will magically re-appear...
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
You can put in picks for any player by going to "Make Picks" on your personal page, then use the
GAME RUNNER password to go into make picks. Not the INITIAL password, but the GAME RUNNER password, the
same one you use to update the stats. In this mode, you can "Make Picks" for the player in any week, even
if the pool is closed or the game has already started. There will be a big warning on the screen saying
you are overriding any closes!
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
To find a player's password, go to the Game Runner menu, and run "Update Players". This program
will show you all the player passwords. You can also CHANGE passwords in here if you need to!
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
To update your overall stats, use the "Calculate Winners" program on your game runner menu.
There is a checkbox to update weekly stats or overall stats. Run this only ONCE per week for the overall
stats. In case you accidently run it more than once in a week, you can use Reset Pool to reset the
overall stats back to zero, then re-run "Calculate Winners" for each week. Note: Reset Pool only updates
OVERALL STATS, it does NOT delete any player picks!
Once you have updated your overall stats, then the Overall Winners report on your player menu will show
the year-to-date scores of everyone. Also, the "tie-breaker variance" report shows you another version
of overall stats.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
There are 2 ways to put in your prior week scores:
- 1. Use "update players" to put in the TOTAL scores for the prior weeks. The only drawback to this
is, if ever needed to RESET and RECALC your stats, you would have to put the adjustments back in also.
- 2. Use "Make Picks". You can put in player picks for previously-played games by using the GAME RUNNER
password instead of the player password in "Make Picks". Of course, the only drawback to this is that
it would be a lot of typing to get all the picks in.
Future updates: There may be some improvements on this in the future. One would be to have an ADJUSTMENT
function, so that you would ADJUST (not just SET) a player score. That adjustment would be saved in a table
so that if you ever recalc, it would be brought back in automatically. The second would be to have an
"import picks from spreadsheet" function to automatically bring in picks from some spreadsheet you have
set up.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Usually the overall winners report gets messed up if you run the "calculate winners" program twice
by accident, thus doubling up one week in the overall stats. Or sometimes, maybe you run "calculate winners"
before the Monday night game has finished.
There is an EASY way to fix this! Just use "Reset Pool" to reset your overall stats to zero. Then
run "Calculate Winners" for each week. That will get everything back to normal. Remember, Reset Pool
does not delete any picks! It only resets the overall stats to zero. So, lets say you accidently
ran the calc for week 3 twice. Here's what you would do:
- Run Reset Pool
- Recalc week 1
- Recalc week 2
- Recalc week 3
You are now back to normal!
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Our online office pool has a big advantage over the normal office pool where you fill out your pick
sheets and turn them in to the pool runner. In the normal paper-based office pool, you have to trust your
game runner. You turn in your sheets to him. If he's playing, there's no way you can know whether he's changing
his picks after the fact! The only way you could be sure would be to get a photo-copy of his pick sheet
on Friday.
In our online pool, this is not a problem! How can you make sure NOONE is cheating? Simply do a
"Show Picks" right after the cutoff deadline. Save that to your hard drive: (In internet explorer,
do a File->Save As). You now have proof of everyone's picks: you can be sure no one has changed their picks
after the games have started!
We also have yet another option: the "Picks Log" program on the player menu. This will show you the
Date/Time stamp of everyones picks for the week: when they were ADDED and when they were MODIFIED.
In this program, however, you have to give the game-runner
some leeway. For example, one of the players may have emailed his picks in, and the game-runner might not
get them input into the system until later. However, the game-runner should have a good explanation of
any pick changes or additions that go into the system after the deadline.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
The answer to this one is a big NO. The game-runner is repsonsible for backing up up the pool.
There is a simple and easy way to back up your pool: Do a "Show Picks" right around the deadline, and save
it to your hard drive (in Internet Explorer, go to File->Save As). We have a program that can
restore your entire pool just from the "Show Picks" listings for each week. If you save your
show picks each week, you can be sure the pool can be recovered in case the data gets corrupted or wiped
out on the server.
We've had problems in the past where picks have been lost. For example, one time the server ran out
of disk space. My web hosting account was supposed to have 250 meg of disk space but in reality it only
had 150 meg (THEIR mistake!). When we hit the incorrect 150 meg limit, everyone's data was corrupted, some picks were
lost, it was a big mess.
The solution is for each game runner to do a Show Picks each week and save it. I've written a program
that can re-build your entire pool (players, picks, etc) just from the Show Picks report. You can also
use this Show Picks backup if anyone is questioning whether someone had changed their picks after the
deadline: the Show Picks has a date/time stamp, you can print it or email it to the person with the
questions.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Best bests is a "confidence pool". Go to "confidence pool" options in "modify football pool" and set it up
as "confidence pool and ADD the confidence points". Then set it up as 1 - 3
(1 confidence point, can assign to 3 games).
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Go to "Modify Football Pool", and go to "DeadLine Day", and put in SU, and "Deadline Time", put in 12PM.
You don't need to worry about Thursday / Saturday games because they get automatically greyed-out once they
start. If you DO want to block picks before the first game if there's a Thursday / Saturday game, you'll
need to change your Deadline day and time.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Follow these steps.
- Go to your personal page. For our example pool, that would be http://www.castle64.com/example.htm
- Click "Game Runner Menu"
- Go to Open/Close Pool
- If you want to permanantly open the pool, Select "Open Pool and LEAVE OPEN" and hit the "Open / Close Pool" button
- This means that the pool will stay open even if you hit the deadline later.
- You must MANUALLY close the pool if you want the pool to be closed when you do this
- If you want to temporarily open the pool, and then close it again automatically when it hits the deadline,
select "OPEN the pool but AUTO-CLOSE when deadline is reached"
NOTE: if you manually open or close the pool, that overrides your deadline! So you'll need to manually
close it as well!
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Go to "modify football pool", then "Confidence Pool Options". Change it from "confidence pool and ADD the confidence points" to "confidence pool confidence points only".
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
You probably just need to run the "Calculate Winners" program from your game runner menu!
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
What you can do is what we call "reset and recalc". You run the RESET POOL program, to reset
your overall stats to ZERO for all players. (Don't worry, the PICKS are still there. This just resets
the OVERALL stats). Then we RECALCULATE each week using the CALCULATE WINNERS program.
For example, lets say you think JOEDOG should have 55 points, but the system shows you
46 points. Open up 2 browsers. Put one browser in the "Calculate Winners" program on your
game runner menu, and put one browser on the "Overall Winners" program.
Now recalulate each week, and make sure each week the total comes to what you think it
should be by looking at Overall Winners. For example:
- Week 1 = 7 points total = 7 points
- Week 1 = 6 points total = 13 points
- Week 1 = 6 points total = 19 points
- Week 1 = 4 points total = 23 points
- Week 1 = 13 points total = 36 points
- Week 1 = 10 points total = 46 points
- Total overall score = 46
If you hit a week where the total score doesn't match what you think it should be, email me at craigh01@gmail.com.
Let me know the player name, the week number where the problem is, and each weeks score and how it should add up.
Then I'll take a look at it.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
The way to do this is to use MAKE PICKS, and sign in using the GAME RUNNER password (not the player password).
Using the Game Runner password does an override if the pool is closed or the games are already over.
You can then pick the games you want for him. For example, suppose your player name is BROWN and it is
Week 1 of NFL, and you want him to have 15 points, and your pool is joespool.htm. Here's what you do:
- Go to http://www.castle64.com/joespool.htm (insert your pool here)
- Hit Make Picks
- Put in BROWN, the game runner password of JOE, and select week 1
- On another browser session, look at SHOW PICKS and look at the winning teams
- Select the first 15 winning teams. Leave the others blank.
- Hit "Make Picks"
- Look at SHOW PICKS again, and you'll see that Joe now has 15 points for week 1.
The first thing is to set the fonts and stuff the way it tells you:
- Font size 1 (the smallest)
- Style arial
- Put point spreads on 2cd line (this makes it less wide)
- All games in lower case (lower case letters take up less room)
If it still doesn't fit, here are some other things to try:
- Decrease the text sizes in your browser
- If you are using Internet Explorer, go to View->Decrease Text Size
- Try printing in Landspape
The best way to copy the Show Picks report into Excel is to use the Windows copy/paste functions.
- Go to your home page and do Show Picks
- Do a CTRL-A (highlight all)
- Open a blank Excel spreadsheet and do a CTRL-V (paste)
- You now have a formatted Excel spreadsheet
You may not like the formatting that Excel does automatically when you paste in a web page. If you want to
get just the RAW DATA into Excel, so that you can do your own formatting, you can do it this way:
- Go to your home page and do Show Picks
- Do a CTRL-A (highlight all)
- Open a blank Excel spreadsheet
- Go to Edit -> Paste Special
- Select Text and click on OK
- You now have all the data in Excel, and you can do whatever formatting you would like to do on the columns
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
You do not need to worry about Thursday and Saturday games! The reason is that
all games are automatically GREYED-OUT 5 minutes before game time. Therefore, if you have
a Sunday noon deadline, you can just leave it alone. No one can pick the Thursday or Saturday games
after they start, so you don't need to worry about those.
Also, SHOW PICKS will SHOW any games that have already started! So everyone can see what everyone else
picked the minute the games start.
In fact, since games are automatically greyed-out once they start, you really don't even need a deadline.
But most game runners still like to have a deadline, maybe because that's the way it's always been done...
Some pool runners prefer to TAKE OUT the Thursday games completely: because all their co-workers are too busy
or whatever to get their picks in before Thursday. If you want to do that, it's easy: go to your Game Runner Menu and
hit the "Override Point Spreads or Delete Certain Games" link. There, you can take OUT the Thursday (and/or Saturday)
games. They won't show up on Show Picks or on Make Picks: it will be as if they never existed...
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
Normally, the game runner will set up the pool so that you can not
see other players picks until after the pool is closed.
This is an OPTION: in "Modify Football Pool", in "Basic Options", there is
an option "When should players be allowed to show other players pics". On
this radio button, you can choose "Any Time", or the default
"Only when pool is closed". Usually game runners do NOT want anyone to see
other peoples picks until AFTER the pool is closed. Personally, I think it's more
fun to add a little strategy and let people look at other peoples picks and
constantly change things back and forth up until game time! But that's not the
norm...!
On your game runner menu, there is an option "Add Over/Under Pick". Just add the over/under pick for any
games you want in the selected week!
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
If you want to run your pool through the playoffs, you have 3 options:
1. You can have the playoffs be part of your regular pool, and just keep going along through the playoffs. Overall scores will continue to accumulate. This doesn't cost you anything, you can just keep using your pool for the year.
2. You can RESET your pool at the end of the regular season and just keep playing in the same pool. So you essentially have 2 pools, but you are using the same pool page. This also doesn't cost you anything.
3. You can set up a SEPARATE pool for the playoffs, with it's own web page. You can get these for half price of your regular pool.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
You can give the following instructions to your players in an email. Where it says "[INSERT], replace with
your specific pool information:
- Go to http://www.castle64.com/[INSERT YOUR PERSONAL PAGE NAME HERE]
- Click on "make picks"
- Choose a week to make picks: preseason is fine to start with, these will be deleted later
- Make up a player name for yourself, and enter it in "Your player name"
- Enter [INSERT YOUR POOL INITIAL PASSWORD HERE] for the password
- Hit "enter your picks"
- It will say "enter your new password". make up a password and enter it
- Type your new password again to validate
- Click on "continue"
- You now have created your new user and can make picks
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
If you have read the faq carefully and still can't find the answer to
your question, I will be happy to answer it by email.
Just email me at craigh01@gmail.com
Try to be as specific as possible. For example, sending me an
email saying "One of my players claims he picked the Jets but the report
shows him picking Cleveland". Telling me which player would be KEY
here for me to answer the question.
CLOSEST! So, if the score is 42, and Joe had 43, and Sally had 40, then Joe wins because
he was only 1 point away.
This COULD be changed as a custom programming request, but for now everyone seems to
be able to live with this rule.
BACK TO TOP OF FAQ
BACK TO MAIN MENU