Q1.  How Do I Participate in the Prediction Contest?
Q2.  How does the bot get the final score?
Q3.  What does the RESULTS post mean?  What are all those numbers?
Q4.  How is this all scored?
Q5.  What do I get if I win?
Q6.  What is the current standing?
Q7.  Who won last year?

To participate in the prediction contest, post your prediction to a thread entitled: "Prediction MMDD TEAM" where MMDD is the date of the game. For example, predictions for the December 22nd game against the Dallas Mavericks would be posted to a thread entitled: 

    Prediction 1222 DAL

For best results, don't post anything in that thread except actual predictions. There is a 'bot which scans the ASBNL-L after the game has started which parses the predictions. It tries to ignore superfluous information, but it is fooled sometimes. It won't accept numbers less than 50, but I may have to lower that threshold if the scoring keeps going down. It basically takes the first 2 numbers it sees. It assigns the first one to the Lakers and the second to the opponent. If you put LAL or Laker in front of 1 of the numbers, it can swap that behavior.

Q2.  How does the bot get the final score?

When the game score is posted to NBA.COM, the 'bot is supposed to automatically compiled the scores and post them to ASBNL-L. This used to be  problematic, because of flaky DSL connections. Now, it is problematic because I haven't had time to re-code for NBA.COMs new (and IMO much worse) site. I hope to make that portion more robust soon. Anyway, if the 'bot doesn't fire automatically, I manually run it and the results are posted to a thread entitled "Prediction MMDD RESULTS".

Q3.  What does the RESULTS post mean?  What are all those numbers?

As to the scoring, the 1st cut is a correct prediction. If you predict the wrong winner it is a disqualification. These are listed at the bottom of the RESULTS posts under DQs. The top half of the post lists those who came up with a correct prediction of the winner and is sorted by how far off their prediction was. For example:

Q4.  How is this all scored?

After the ranking of those who correctly predicted the outcome, those who chose the wrong team are listed as DQs or DisQualified. 

At the end of each month, a regular posting ranks the overall season. The ranking is based on this formula: 5*W+3*S+T-D where W is number of wins, S is number of seconds, T is number of thirds, and D is number of DQs. 

Q5.  What do I get if I win?

The grand prize is $41. Hopefully the Larry Coon RSBP Playoff contest tradition will be followed.

Q6.  What is the current standing?

Standings at the end of the 2001-2002 World Championship Season

Q7.  Who won last year?

$Bill Luebkert is the grand prize winner for 2000-2001!