Entries for our Monte Carlo AMS pick 'em competition are now open.
You can access the entry form via
http://www.britishtennis.net/Competitions.html - you can also find a link to the post-Miami overall pick 'em rankings there too. The results at the end of day 1 will be accessible via that same link before the start of play on day 2 (i.e. Monday) and intra-day updates will appear from Monday onwards.
We believe they are planning to schedule quite a few main draw matches for Sunday (along with the final qualifying matches), so for this tournament, everyone will need to make their picks without knowing who each qualifier is. Fortunately, there are no Q v Q matches this time, so that just leaves you to judge whether the players drawn to play (Q)s are so weak on clay that they are likely to lose to the average qualifier!
IMPORTANT: In order for your ranking points from this competition to be combined with your ranking points from earlier pick 'ems, you need to enter with EXACTLY the same name as you used for previous pick 'ems - even an extra space or a single missing character may be enough to throw the system. If in doubt, please copy the name after the 'Hi' at the top of this email and paste it into the entry form.
If you want to change the name or team you use for pick 'em permanently, please email btpickem@hotmail.com after you enter Miami to let us know what you have changed it from or to instead of just entering with a new name and hoping that we spot that it is the same person!
PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS
Because of the tight timescales and the ever-increasing number of boards/forums taking part, I won't have time to go round and advertise this competition everywhere as I have done in the past, so if you think that other people from your board/forum might like to take part too, I would be really grateful if you would set up a thread or post about the competition there if nobody else from your board has already done so. Representatives of tennisopolis, centrecourt and the Feddies in particular did a spectacular job of this last time and many thanks to them and everyone else who posted on their forum, thus helping us to shatter our previous AMS entrants record for Miami. I don't expect quite so many this time because of the tight deadline, but who knows!
ENTRY DEADLINE
The main entry deadline is when play is due to start in the main draw, i.e. 10 am UK time, (09.00 GMT / 10.00 BST / 11.00 CET / 05.00 US Eastern / 02.00 US Pacific) tomorrow, SUNDAY. However, late entries will be accepted without penalty until the first game in the first main draw match has been completed. Last year, the first main draw match was the second match on the main court and hence started at about 11.00 GMT but I cannot guarantee that this will be the case this year. Because people in different time zones will be receiving this email at different times of day (or night), to be fair to everyone we like to give people about 24 hours to enter from when this email is sent. So in this case, we will accept even later entries up to 15.00 GMT on Sunday (or 24 hours after the last of this batch of emails leaves our mail server), subject to the following conditions:
- late entrants will automatically score 0 for any matches that have already started by the time their entries are received
- no entries will be accepted more than 5 minutes after the last qualifying match ends, even if that happens before 15.00 GMT T
he second condition is to ensure that nobody gets to make their picks with qualifiers already placed in the draw, so if you are pushing it close, please keep an eye on the live scores to make sure you send your entry in time!
LATE CHANGES TO THE DRAW If you can, please use the Print button at the bottom of the entry form to print your picks before you send your entry so that you have a record of them. The page you will see after sending your entry will explain what your options are if there are any changes to the draw due to late withdrawals before play starts. Good luck :-)
Steven