Introduction

Percentagesports.com features a unique contest designed to assess forecasting abilities over a broad range of sports leagues. The primary sports covered on this site include football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer. Registration is free for all users. Percentagesports.com is not a gambling or betting website. Instead the service provided is a unique game of skill. As an incentive to participate, Percentagesports.com will regularly give away cash prizes to contest winners. However, players are encouraged to create and join their own private groups where they can compete against friends (like fantasy sports) and devise their own independently monitored prize schemes. In addition, players are invited to participate and discuss sports in the Forum. The Forum is set apart from the main site so those who choose to discuss and debate sports in the Forum will have to register a different username and password.

Registration

Registration is free and simple. Complete the registration form by filling in the required fields. Rest assured that your privacy will be protected at all times. Percentagesports.com will not share or sell your information to any third party. The information you provide us will only be used for contacting you in the event you win a prize.

Initially you will not choose your password. Your password will be sent to the Email address you provide on the registration form. You will need this in order to login for the first time. Once you have logged in, you have the option to change your password.

Gameplay Overview and Basics

Please refer to the homepage for a description regarding gameplay. In short, the main attraction of Percentagesports.com is a unique game of skill. Players submit percentage allocations over the outcomes of sporting events and they are scored according to the percentage they assigned to the realized outcome of the game. The player with the highest cumulative score across a schedule of games wins a modest cash prize. Players are also given the option to create private groups and compete with family and friends under their own private terms and conditions.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us via the Contacts link on the homepage.

Contest Results, Standings, and Recent Winners

To see your rank and score for a particular contest click on the Contest Results link on the homepage. This will take you to a page where you will choose the league and schedule you are interested in. An example of a contest could be NFL Week 9 Games. To see how you rank in relation to all the players you would go to the Contest Results page, select the NFL Regular Season session from the drop-down menu, and then click on the link for the NFL Week 9 Games schedule.

The Complete Standings rank players based on aggregate scores from all contests within a league session. Thus, at the conclusion of the NFL Week 9 Games contest, if you were to go to the Complete Standings page and select the session for NFL Regular Season, then the rankings would include scores across all contests from previous weeks (i.e. in this case, Week 1 - Week 9).

Finally, the Recent Winners section displays the names of the winners of the most recently completed contest in each league session.

Sports News

The Sports News section contains automatically updated news articles from www.espn.com.

Public Prizes

As an incentive to participate Percentagesports.com will be giving away small cash prizes to the winners of contests subject to state laws governing contests (i.e. games of skill) and Federal Trade Commission regulations. Please note that prizes will only be awarded if the number of users participating in the contest exceeds 50 people.

Private Groups

Players are encouraged to create and join private groups with family and friends. The group maker decides on a group name and password and forwards the information to his or her friends. The group maker also sets limits on the size of the group and provides a brief description of the group terms, conditions, and joining requirements. For example, you may require each entrant in your group to pay an entry fee. Percentagesports.com is not responsible for any disputes that may arise within a private group.

It is recommended that you set up your own independently monitored prize schemes and incentives. All registered users are eligible for public contest prizes even if they are a member of a private group. You can find and ask people to join your group by posting a message in the Forum. There is no limit to the number of groups that any one individual may create and/or join.

Strategy

The scoring rules used to evaluate percentage allocations are designed to elicit truthful reports. Your optimal strategy is to assign percentages in direct accordance to your true beliefs over the game outcomes. This means you should avoid high variance allocations most of the time. Even for games where the outcome seems very obvious to you, it is recommended that you avoid giving all or nearly all of the weight to the outcome you feel is likely to happen.

An example will help illustrate the point:

Suppose A is playing Z and you believe A will beat Z 9 out of 10 times (assume there is no possibility of a draw outcome). That is, you believe that A will win with probability 90% and Z will win with probability 10%. The table below shows that your optimal strategy is to report truthfully.

The first and second columns represent your inputs for the outcomes that A and Z will win, respectively. The third and fourth columns display the score associated with each input. The last column gives the score you would expect given your true beliefs over the outcomes and your percentage allocations. Notice that your expected score is highest at +36.81 when you report truthfully. That is, you assign 90% to A and 10% to Z in direct accordance to your subjective beliefs. This result is a direct consequence of the scoring rule. You are strongly encouraged to keep this strategy in mind when assigning percentages.

Forum

Register to discuss sports in the Forum. Here you can also meet new people and invite them to join your private group.

Newsletter

Percentagesports.com recommends all registered users to sign up to the newsletter system for important news and updates regarding contests on the website. Your privacy will be protected.