Welcome to the Oracle Challenge, the contest that tests your prediction abilities down to the hundredth of a percent!

Changes for spring 2006

Please note the new scoring system. The rest of the rules are the same as before.

The Challenge

For each match in the GameFAQs Sprint Contest you need to pick a winner and predict the percentage of the vote they will receive. New participants are still being accepted until at least the end of round 3 (please indicate that you are new and make a minimum of three picks).

Post your predictions in this topic, one prediction per line. Your predictions must start with the name of your winner and end with your predicted percentage. Examples:

Link with 85%
Link 55.13%
Link over CATS with 67.55%
Link - 77.5%

Please use one of these formats, and always remember to include the % sign. Predictions are entered into our database by a script, which may miss your predictions if you use a weird format.

The Scoring

For each match you will earn points based on how close your guess was to the actual outcome. Scoring is cumulative and the winner of the Oracle Challenge will be the person with the most points at the end of the final match. For each match you can earn anywhere from 0 and 50 points. The scoring system works as follows:

Correctly choosing the winner earns you 50-x points.
Incorrectly choosing the winner earns you 45-x points.
(Where x is the difference between your guess and the character's actual percentage.)

Example:

Your guess: Link with 65%
My guess: CATS with 55%
Actual result: Link 60%, CATS 40%
Your score: 50 - (65-60) = 45 points
My score: 45 - (55-40) = 30 points

The Rules

It is necessary to have a few rules to keep the challenge running smoothly. They are:

1) A valid entry consists of a clear pick and prediction (i.e. Link with 85.03%). The prediction must be greater than or equal to 50.00%.
2) Your prediction does not need to be different from everybody else?s. However, intentional and continuous prediction mimicry will not be allowed.
3) All predictions must be made five minutes before the usual start time of that match?s poll (approx. 11:55pm EST, 10:55am CST, 8:55pm PST). Predictions submitted after this time will not be counted or may be subject to penalty. No predictions will be accepted after a poll has started, regardless of the start time.
4) You may change your prediction for any match at any time, subject to the rules above. Please indicate clearly that this is a change to a previous entry.
5) You may not delete any post in a prediction topic (if you do, please post immediately after to explain the deletion). This is to prevent abuse of the above rule and to reduce confusion.
6) If you post with an alt, you must clearly state the name of your main account. (Exception: if the alt is listed on your user profile page <http://oraclechallenge.com/profiles.php?type=users>, I already know about it).
7) You may predict matches in advance if you need to. Please tell me beforehand so we can arrange this.
8) I reserve the right to disqualify a pick for any justifiable reason.

Team Challenge

In addition to the main Oracle Challenge, this time we are testing a side contest involving teams. The rules for the team challenge are simple:

1. Sign up with a partner before the beginning of the first match.
2. Make just one prediction per match - it counts for the Oracle Challenge and the Oracle Team Challenge.
3. Your team score for the day is equal to both team members' scores added together.
4. If one player misses a prediction, the team will get either (partner's score * 2) or (partner's score + average score for the day), whichever is lower. This is to keep teams from being eliminated by one missed prediction, and ONLY applies to the team scores.
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