The NHL season starts in 2 weeks. 2 weeks! I put together this years pickem for hockey. Similar to last year, you can either do the ICH Picks for the Top 10 rated games each week or create your own group and add wager points and more or less games each week.
College Football Picks
NFL Picks
Now that the AP Poll is out for College Football both games are now all set to go.
Most of the features available in both games are pretty similar. In both, the ICH Picks are based on the spread. For created groups there are options for using the spread, wager points, weeks dropped, and pick deadline (before 1st game or each game).
College Football offers a bunch of additional options for which games are picked. You can choose to include any combination of Top 25 games, individual conferences, or individual teams. You can also choose if games against FCS teams should be included.
Changed for this year to make things easier, all your picks are the same across groups based on if the group uses the spread or not. Any picks in groups that use the spread will automatically be registered as your ICH Picks. That should help people compete with me, I won both last year. Wager Points will need to be set for each group. On my to-do list is a single page to make all your picks and Wager Points.
Baseball Pickem is all set to go. Some changes for this year. Picking every series was a bit overwhelming. Instead I am going to come up with 10 series to pick each week. If you create a custom group, you can adjust that number. Also for custom groups you can select to use wager points as in all the other pickem games. Get over there and make your picks!
Here are the 10 top rated series for the first week:
| Top 10 Rated Series for Week 1 | |
|---|---|
| Indians @ Rangers | Mon Apr 6 |
| Twins @ White Sox | Fri Apr 10 |
| Giants @ Padres | Fri Apr 10 |
| Cubs @ Brewers | Fri Apr 10 |
| Mets @ Marlins | Fri Apr 10 |
| Dodgers @ Diamondbacks | Fri Apr 10 |
| Red Sox @ Angels | Fri Apr 10 |
| Rangers @ Tigers | Fri Apr 10 |
| Blue Jays @ Indians | Fri Apr 10 |
| Astros @ Cardinals | Fri Apr 10 |
I originally created Ice Cream Helmet two years ago for Baseball Picks. I had some extra time and decided to do the Tourney. I’d been disappointed by the options to customize the experience and I wanted to make it more social.
It hasn’t been as easy or successful as I had hoped. Although I’m pretty sure the other sites have more resources to throw at the game than I do. From what I have seen, the other sites have improved over the past two years.
Now that Ice Cream Helmet has so many different games, the competition can run throughout all of them. The only issue is making sure that people do their ICH Picks. At first, that required making a different set of picks. I’m simplified that over time. If the group has the same type of settings as the ICH settings, then the picked will carry over. Situations where the settings are different are things like football groups choosing to not use spreads.
Using the ICH Picks can spread into all sorts of rankings. You could compare yourself against your ICH Friends. Compare with other fans of a particular team or school. Compare against members of ‘teams’ (sort of like groups but they aren’t tied to one specific game). Really, rankings could be made based on any sort of information a member provided. Not much of this has been implemented. My hope was to slowly work out these features as membership grew. If the only people playing are in my group, then there isn’t much use in these additional features.
So sign up and make your picks for the Tourny on ICH.
Today I added the pick distribution so you can get an idea of what people are picking. Right now only Pitt, UNC, and UConn are getting any love to win it all.
Back for its 2nd year. Oscar Picks on ICH! Just like last year, make your picks in all the categories. You can create a group and have your friends join. If you create a group you can choose the point values for each category. Maybe you want to heavily weight the art direction and costume categories. Or maybe you don’t want them to count at all.
The Daily Pick went on a bit of an unexpected hiatus. Looks like prior to this weekend the last one was on September 4th. I made some changes so that hopefully I can keep up.
It will take a while to catch up to my 159 correct picks but the rankings are based on the past month or so of results. So you can climb the rankings quickly if you keep up.
Today’s Matchup: Texas @ Oklahoma (College Basketball)
I decided I wasn’t through making picks for the NFL season. So I decided to add playoff games to the mix.
You can either make ICH Picks or create a group and invite your friends.
| Saturday, January 3, 2009 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Favorite | Line | Underdog | Time |
| Atlanta | 2.5 | ARIZONA | 4:30pm |
| Indianapolis | 1.5 | SAN DIEGO | 8:00pm |
| Sunday, January 4, 2009 | |||
| Favorite | Line | Underdog | Time |
| Baltimore | 3.5 | MIAMI | 1:00pm |
| Philadelphia | 3.5 | MINNESOTA | 4:30pm |
Home team in CAPS. Spreads are from time of this posting and may change before kickoff.
Ice Cream Helmet started with the NCAA Basketball Tournament in 2007. For this season, I’ve added College Basketball Picks.
The season will start on Week 3 of the season, which is November 24th. I looked at the games for the first 2 weeks and saw that a total of 5 games qualified, based on my ratings, to be picked.
There are 2 problems with the first few weeks of the season. First, even more than college football, good basketball teams warm up with cupcakes. Second, most of the good games this early in the season come in early season tournaments. Those matchups are only known a day or 2 in advance. So there would be no way to pick those games. The easiest way to handle things was to just say that picks would begin in Week 3.
I mentioned that some early games didn’t qualify for my ratings. These are the ratings I use to determine which games will be picked each week. The ratings mostly use the rankings. I tried to find the best matchups with the better teams in Division 1. This comes out to about 10 games per week for Weeks 3-8 and about 20 games per week the rest of the season. These estimates came from the ratings at the end of last season, using this season’s schedule. The numbers for this year should wind up being just about the same.
You can choose to just make picks that will count toward your ICH Score or create your own group. Creating your own group will let you add things like wager points or drop lowest scoring weeks.
The first set of picks should be ready to go mid-next week. Get started creating your groups and getting your friends to sign up now!
I’ve also created the following pages to help you follow college basketball. These pages include my favorite feature, the team info pop-ups. They will show the team’s record as well as recent and upcoming schedule.
Scores/Schedule
Standings
Teams
Rankings
Also, if you click on any of the schools, it will take you to the school’s page. These are still being worked on. Right now it will show you the basketball schedule and football schedule, if that school has a D1A team.
I’m not sure how much hockey coverage you’ll find on here this season. I love the Flyers but I don’t have a ton of time to keep on top of the entire NHL during the regular season. As a start, each week I’ll post the top 10 games according to Ice Cream Helmet. ICH picks are made on the top 10 games each week. You can join in and make picks, or create your own group and pick up to 25 games per week.
| Thursday, October 9, 2008 | ||
| Calgary @ Vancouver | 10:30pm | |
| Friday, October 10, 2008 | ||
| Chicago @ New York | 7:00pm | |
| Montreal @ Buffalo | 7:30pm | |
| Washington @ Atlanta | 7:30pm | |
| Saturday, October 11, 2008 | ||
| Chicago @ Washington | 7:00pm | WGN |
| Montreal @ Toronto | 7:00pm | NHLN |
| New York @ Philadelphia | 7:00pm | |
| Dallas @ Nashville | 8:00pm | |
| Vancouver @ Calgary | 10:00pm | NHLN |
| Sunday, October 12, 2008 | ||
| Colorado @ Edmonton | 8:00pm | |
This year, for the first time, Ice Cream Helmet will feature Hockey Picks. The standard ICH game will feature 10 games per week to pick from. They are the top 10 rated games as rated by ICH. Each correct pick is worth 1 point. Your rank will go toward your Overall ICH Score.
You can choose to create your own group and have up to 25 games per week available to be picked. Custom groups also feature the option to use wager points as in most other Ice Cream Helmet games. Wager points allow you to get extra points if you are correct on your most confident selections but subtract from your total if you are incorrect.
You can get started now, games for Week 1 are all set to pick.
The first four games of the season take place on Oct. 4th and 5th in Europe. The rest of the league gets started on Oct. 9th. The deadline to make ICH picks is before each individual game, the first being the Flames/Canucks game on Oct. 9th. Custom gropus have the option of having a similar deadline of before each game or having a single weekly deadline before the first game of the week (weeks start on Monday).
When I created College Football Pickem last year I wanted something more than just one point per game. Confidence points were a little too much. I came up with the idea of Wager Points. Each person has the option each week to wager points on one game or split it up any way they wish. The risk being that if that pick is wrong, those points are subtracted from your total. For my group I went with 10 points.
I still think its a great idea, except for the fact that I’m terrible at it. For college football, through Week 4, which was this weekend, I have been wrong on every pick I’ve put wager points on. That’s -40 points. My total score for the season stands at -4. You might think I’m terrible at making picks in general, not so. My group has 9 members. The most correct picks in the group (just picks, not counting wagers) is 37. Two people have that total. Their scores counting wager points: 41 (1st Place) and 29 (5th Place). Me? I have 36 correct picks. I just have no idea which ones of them are going to be right beforehand. So while I’m only 1 pick behind the most in the group, I’m 45 points behind. If I would be even on my wager points so far, or just decided not to ever use them, I’d be in 2nd place.
I should either stay away from Vegas or go and bet every game. I think betting every game is the wiser idea. My win percentage is just over 50% and it would be more fun than not doing anything.
My method for using my wager points is to pick the two games I’m most confident in and then wager 5 points on each. I’d rather give myself a chance to come out even in the week than wind up losing 10 points off of one game. People in my groups seem to have come up with their own method. Some do the all in on one game, others wager 2-3 points at a time. I haven’t seen anyone go 1 point on 10 different games yet. Actually, that might not be a terrible idea for me.
For NFL Pickem I have the same setup. For some reason I’m a little better at that. Through Week 3, the games I put wager points on were both early games and I got those correct. That puts me at +10 for the season.
