Sportsbet's Bitcointalk Sports Fanatics League (BSFL) – 14000+$ rewards



Currently running Season 7


Leaderboard & Results || Next Round Questions and Schedule || Cup competition rules || Seasonal rules/changes

Season 1 history || Season 2 history || Season 3 history || Season 4 history || Season 5 history || Season 6 history

After a successful World cup pilot project, we're happy to inform you that the forum PVP competition is back and will be bigger, longer and better than before!
This time Cro2 team is introducing the Sportsbet's Bitcointalk Sports Fanatics League (BSFL)!


General competition format

• A multi-league PVP H2H system in which players play against each other every round for points like in football (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw).
• Points are earned by predicting sports results/situations/events throughout the week.
• If you played our World Cup competition you know roughly what to expect but his one will have more sports with majority of questions still being football.

Competition rules

• There will be a questionnaire for every round and it will consist of 10 questions – the Bitcointalk's World Cup participants already know how it looks like.
  Majority of the questions will be football-based, with some other important events mentioned as well. After every round the points will be calculated and according to fixtures list, the P2P duel will be resolved.
  The player with more correct answers will get 3 points for a win, and if the players have the same amount of correct answers they will be rewarded 1 point each.
  Example – if you win the duel with 7-5 result, you'll still get 3 points. If you win with 2-1 result, you get 3 points as well.
• The questions will be about the upcoming week's sports events and the answers need to be submitted before the 1st game of the round starts. We will be using Google forms for that.
• Forum rank Full Member and higher can participate.
  Some exceptions will be made, Sportsbet will make some spots available for newly registered members that are active on Clubtalk chat or some other SB platforms.
• The 4th Division still has spots open.
• The players that will be in the Divisions 1, 2 and 3 in every following season will always have to pay the buy-in fee.
  The buy-in fee will be defined at the end of each season and will be paid out of the season rewards if possible.
• If you fail to participate in more than 2 rounds in a season, you will be removed from your league and will be able to rejoin from the lowest Division next season, if there is space left.
  This is decided because we want to make the competition fair to everybody - if you don't play often, some opponents get easy points while others do not.
  

Added rules

1.) Please install Telegram Bitcointalk bot. You will get notified every time we tag participants for important info.
2.) Please submit your answers on time. Failure to submit on time in this season means instant loss.
3.) Please submit all the answers, and submit them with possible outcomes. When you give free points in your H2H questions to your opponent, it isn't fair to all other league members.
4.) To deal with the situations from points 2) and 3), we are forced to introduce some penalties.
Each team that fails to submit answers on time or submits the answers in a way that is not in accordance with competition rules will receive a 1 point deduction – not for that round but from total points won in the league.
We think the penalty is fair to keep the league competitive, and you can always ask in the thread if you don't understand some of the questions.
5.) If you repeatedly fail to submit the questions on time and in correct format, there's a high chance that we will be forced to remove you from the competition.
The competition is becoming more serious and with the plans Sportsbet has for it going forward, we all need to do our part to make it fair and exciting. You were doing that most of the time so we aren't worried, and we thank you for it.

Tiebreaker implementation added (8.5.2023)

• In a situation when players have the same number of points the following methods will be implemented to rate them.
  

General rules about questions

Sports Grading Rules – Following will be taken in consideration unless otherwise stated in the question itself
* The questions are always about male sport/teams/athletes, unless specified otherwise
* Football question are regular time, no extra time or penalties unless stated otherwise
* Cards in football are counted both on pitch and off pitch. Yellow card is one point, red card is 2 points. Second yellow is one point. Meaning any player can accumulate maximum of 2 points.
* Player props, like goals scored or assists are for the purposes of our competition are counted as valid even if player did not play a single second of the game.
* Forfeits in sports like Tennis or loses due to technical problems in eSports are counted as regular ML wins.
* If there is only one possible outcome before the deadline, the question will be voided and all potential VAR used on that question cancelled.


VAR rules: (29.6.2023)

-  Can be used to change answers in any round before that round's deadline
-  Can be used 3 times per season
-  Send us your desired changes over PM or write in the thread and tag both Trofo & cryptofrka, this is up to your discretion. If you trust us, better use PM to not clog the thread and give possible info to others. If you are playing against us maybe it is better to post in thread to avoid possible frictions
-  You can use VAR for free inside 10 minutes of your submission on Sunday or Monday, not on Tuesday
-  After you spend your challenges don't come and ask for more, whatever happens there are no more changes left for you












Schedule

Season 7

• We start Season 7 with 64 teams. Divisions 1, 2 and 3 have 18 players each, and Division 4 has 10 players.
• We feel that 3 paid Divisions with 18 players is the soft spot for BSFL, so no league expansions are expected for the foreseeable future.
  Therefore, the promotion/relegation format will stay pretty much the same as it was in S06.
• Bottom 3 teams will be relegated from Division 1 to Division 2. Top 3 teams will be promoted directly from Division 2 to Division 1.
  15th team from Division 1 will play a 1v1 decider against the 4th placed team from Division 2 for the spot in Division 1.
• Bottom 3 teams will be relegated from Division 2 to Division 3. Top 3 teams will be promoted directly from Division 3 to Division 2.
  15th team from Division 2 will play a 1v1 decider against the 4th placed team from Division 3 for the spot in Division 2.
• Bottom 2 teams will be relegated from Division 3 to Division 4. Top 2 teams will be promoted directly from Division 4 to Division 3.
  16th team from Division 3 will play a 1v1 decider against the 3rd placed team from Division 4 for the spot in Division 3.
• Division 4 will have double rounds - so players will play each other twice.
  We're accepting new players until the start of BSFL, meaning Sunday May 18th, 18:00 GMT.

Season 8 announcement

• Season 8 will almost certainly mirror Season 7. We will just look to add a few more players into Division 4.
• Just a side note, Season 8 isn’t yet confirmed, we go season by season and get extensions based on BSFL forum metrics. These are really good so there’s no reason to doubt BSFL will not reach Season 8.

There are some new rules we are introducing.

LMS side-competition

• LMS format will become a regular side event in BSFL. It will work similar to the EUROS and will consist of all standard BSFL league rounds (currently 17).
  Points earned in these rounds will be accumulated and the one that survived all rounds and has the highest total will be pronounced as the winner. If there are more people with the same amount of points, they will equally share the prize.
  Points will be taken from the ‘freebet’ column calculation, not from Head to Head results, with 1 minor correction – to win a H2H point for LMS, it will not be enough to have the best result it in your league but across all the leagues combined.
• All those that have 2 points per round or less will be eliminated, if everybody has 3 or more points, those with the next worst result will be eliminated (those with 3 points, or 4 if nobody has 3 etc).
  A player that fails to submit is automatically disqualified and his points do not count in that round's quota - meaning that if there is a player that did not submit and the round's minimum points is 3 - all with 3 are eliminated.
• There will be buy-backs, the fee will be increased every 5 rounds. The buy-backs will be 0,25 mBTC after rounds 1-5, 0,5 mBTC after rounds 6-10 and 1 mBTC after rounds 11-xx.
• You will have to survive the last round to be able to claim the reward. Everybody that survived all rounds (excluding the winner(s)) will share the additional 500$ freebets pool equally.
  In case that nobody has more than 2 points in the last round, those with the least number of points will be eliminated. If that still does not leave us with a winner, there will not be any eliminations in the last round.
• If there is only one player remaining after the buyback deadline at any point before the last round, he will be the winner and the freebets will be shared among those that lost to the winner in the previous round.

Late submission penalties

• In case of late submission, the player loses the duel with a score of 3-0 and gets 1 'total points' penalty - it is the same rule that we had so far.
  In an unlikely situation in which 2 players paired against each other do not submit answers, their duel will be rated as 0-0 but they will not get a point from that 'draw'. They will still be regularly penalized - so 1 penalty point per player.
• To add to that, if a person has 1 missed submission at the end of the season, his reward will be reduced by 20%. If he has 2, the reward will be 50% less and 3 means automatic disqualification and no reward at all.
  The deducted rewards from such players will go to the next season's budget.
• Freebet rewards will be decreased in 10$ increments - every missed submission means 10$ less reward, 3 missed submissions means no reward at all

Evil fee

• In case a member got disqualified in any of the previous seasons and wants to join again, he is returning from the lowest possible Division.
  The initial penalty for participating again is a 1mBTC 'evil fee' that is returned to the player at the end of the season if the player submits the answers for all rounds on time.
  If he fails to do so, evil fee is kept and shared between all the teams that secured promotion from the lowest Division in that season.
• If a player gets disqualified again, each subsequent time the evil fee is doubled, so becomes 2mBTC, then 4mBTC etc.

Logo rewards

• Every team that achieves promotion to Division 3 will receive a team logo.
• There are no plans to have logos in Division 4 but you can make them individually.
• All clubs that receive logos will be required to make a short 'team summary' post - you can see how they look by clicking on any member's name that already has a logo in the league table.

Selling your spots

• Based on the results of the poll we ran at the start of Season 05, we will allow selling of BSFL positions.
• That means that are going the Superleague way in BSFL and from Season 6 onwards it is possible to buy/sell your spots in the leagues.
  Example – if a player wants out, he can sell his spot to the highest bidder. Also, a player could say he’s willing to buy a Div1 club for x mBTC, and wait for offers. All transactions need to be done through PM and announced on time.
• We will allow for both position switching and position selling, more info can be seen on this link. A club that is bought pays 1 extra buy-in fee for the next season (so, if standard buy-in is 1mBTC, for that club it is 2mBTC).
• Clubs can be sold only in a short period between the end of the season and the rewards payment, that is usually around 2 weeks because the Cup final is always the formal end of the season.

Promotion/relegation system visually










Prizes and buy-ins

• There will be a buy-in fee of 1,5 mBTC for the 1st Division spots, 0,75mBTC for the 2nd Division spots and 0,3mBTC for Division 3 spots.
  Division 4 remains free to play. Check our dedicated sign up thread for more details.
• The rewards for top 3 Divisions will come from sponsorship rewards and buy-ins and will be balanced accordingly.
  Division 4 will be free to enter, and rewards will be some free bets, amount dependent on the final placement.
• Almost every member will get a portion of the prize pool and the prizes are purposely set like that so that throughout the competition there is always something to play for.
• To make it even more engaging we will add weekly free bet rewards for the player with most correct answers in each league (40$ for Division 1, 30$ for Division 2, 20$ for Division 3 and 10$ for Division 4).
  Only one player per league can claim the weekly reward - rules for the freebet grading are here.
• The funds are in control of Cro2 on our escrow wallet.
• The rewards will be transferred to BTC at the start of the competition and paid out in that amount later.
• The eventual small difference in payment due to tx fees will be added/deducted from the reward for the Division 1 champion.

Rewards distribution



The rewards for the LMS will be 10 mBTC + rebuys for the winner and 500$ in freebets for all other participants that survived the final round.

Some notes and explanations are below:

• We feel we’re in a good place now both with the rewards amount and with the number of players, so in the next few seasons we’ll probably make only some small corrections when/if needed.
• Total budget for the Season 7 will be in excess of 14.000$. Sportsbet provided 9.000$ in BTC and we collected 45,9 mBTC in fees from Div 1, Div2 and Div3 participants, 2.38 mBTC in Season 06 penalties and 1.05 mBTC in club selling fees.
• We will once again have a big freebets budget to add to that – over 3.600$ in total across multiple leagues and competitions.
• So, total prize pool in USD value at the beginning of this season is over 14.000$ (plus all the LMS rebuys) and an additional 3.600$ in freebets.

Cup schedule will be updated on the link in the 3rd post of the thread at a later date.






General remarks

• We would really like to create some connection between the BTT community members. Therefore, we'd like this thread to be a combination of banter, sports analysis and general feedback.
  We will purposely introduce occasional questions about cricket, NFL, e-sports, baseball etc. to bring more visibility to important sports events and milestones.
  We encourage you to discuss about it and offer your analysis/opinions here.
• Sportsbet will also have some extra rewards for most helpful or active participants, Steve promised to drop by occasionally and rain some free bets.
• We hope we'll all have a lot of fun with this, it is a test version of the competition that will run throughout 2024 and if there will be enough interest & hype around it, we're sure that it will span through multiple seasons.
• We know this is a lot to take in, especially if you did not participate in our Wold Cup completion thread. Feel free to check that one for some info as well.
  We are here to answer all your questions and everything will be very clear once competition starts and the few rounds are completed.
• For now just make sure to sign up in dedicated thread because the spots will be limited.

Feel free to write your feedback and let's have a fantastic sports 2025 season!