Sports Betting 2.2.0 has been released.

I was practically asleep while putting in the payout ratio feature for multiple choice matchups. So there are most likely going to be bugs somewhere. Also unfortunately it is limited to 1 underdog with higher payout per matchup, even for multiple choice at this point. Below are some of the changes.

Underdog System

1. I can set it up to pay out more points if you select an underdog and they win.

Odds Changes

1. Now the betting page will tell how much a team is favored by, even if odds are not being used in the matchup. If they are being used it will say "must win by". Otherwise it says "favored by".

Changes In The "Look"

1. Most tables now tell how many bets have been placed for the matchup rather than the odds.

2. Complete makeover of the Matchup/Betting pages. I am still not happy with it so it will change yet again later.

3. Team logos are shown now. The default "no logo" image is some horrible one I made just as a placeholder until I get some graphics person to make one.

4. Usernames now colored by member group color.

Contests

1. The main page shows total contest stats. Click on a contest and see that contest's breakdown. The username links on those pages go to that specific contest's picks for that person.

2. The My Picks page has pages now. Although for specific contests it has ALL on 1 page. Only the complete page has page breakdowns.

3. I made the payout function for contests. I click a button to signal the contest ahs ended and it then gives out the jackpot to the winner. If there are multiple winners it will split it evenly between them.

Bug Fixes

1. Several bug fixes, as usual.

Other Changes

1. Changes to speed things up.

2. Now guests can view matchup pages, but without the betting form obviously.

3. Other changes I can't think of at the moment.

4. The betting buttons disable once clicking, in order to prevent double clicks.

Future Plans

1. NCAA Tourney Picker.

2. Fantasy sports content including a daily game to pick which of several players will have the best day.

3. Tips area for matchups. You would either pay points or maybe be in a certain user group to be able to read tips for matchups. I think this is a cool idea because I may, for example, point out a trend I notice with a team or maybe something someone else informed me of.

4. Skinning and bug fixing.

5. User Group Permissions.

6. Users submit matchups and if I approve them, memebrs can bet on theirs.

7. Sports Trivia Section.

8. Other cool features. Stay tuned!

Notes

1. Feel free to give suggestions and feedback.

2. Click the "Bugs" link at the top of the site to report problems.

3. For more information and notes about the Sports Betting System, please read the following topics: http://www.gottalk.com/index.php?showtopic=1320 (version 1.0.0), http://www.gottalk.com/index.php?showtopic=1346 (version 2.0.0), http://www.gottalk.com/index.php?showtopic=1350 (version 2.0.1), and http://www.gottalk.com/index.php?showtopic=1368 (version 2.1.0)

I am lowering the monthly free and big bets back to 3 becuase not enough matchups are added and bet on tow arrant 5 right now. If people ever actually bet on what I add, I would add more of a variety, but too much gets ignored by the members at this point.

Even though there haven't been many people betting and I haven't seemingly added many matchups so far, it's cool to see there have been over 140 bets placed so far. That is still a pretty high number for something I just threw together starting in December.

I really NEED to start the bracket setup soon. I only have a little more than a month until time to use it. I am going to make it where it can be used for things other than the ncaa tourney too. Just anything requiring a bracket setup. I ened to really redo quite a bit.

I just wish I could find more people to come use this and reviews system. I am still working hard on both.

I think the tourney picker won't be that hard. I ahven't started it, but I have ideas on the coding in my mind already. I have a month and I am sure by March 1'st I can have that done and then have all the rest of the system fine tuned with new features. Wish I had time to make fantasy baseball, but probably won't for now.

Sigh. I haven't started the bracket addon still. I only have 2 weeks to do it even if I start now. Hopefully I am able to do it becuase thus far I have met all of my main deadlines on this system.

I just needed a break from coding it and worked on review system instead and now I haven't worked on either for weeks.

good luck.

Thanks. Still haven't started though. Who knows how long it will take when I finally do get my mind set toward even doing it.

ok I am going to start at least planning the bracket game today and hopefully start programming. I only have about a week and need to somehow focus, so I will be lucky to finish it and it be close to bug-free!

By the way if ever "no team" wins a matchup that may be buggy too becuase that outcome hasnt been tested yet. Everything has had a winner thus far.

Somehone should find out for me how odds work in vega. Such as... if it's 14 and a team wins by 14 even does either team cover the spread? Or is it considered no winner? I think it should be considered now inner, but it may not be that way.

Well I mentally figured out how I want tos et up the bracket picker. I also put the tables into the database. This is going to be quite resource intensive, unfortunately. I did make most fields tinyint fields where it wouldn't take up as much DB space, but even still I have already put 210 fields in 2 tables in the DB for this addon. One table has 141 of those fields. There are ways I could have made less fields, but I don't think I would have saved space by doing it those ways anyway. I think I pretty much did what I have to do.

I think there is a pretty good chance I will be able to make this on time even though I have not started the actual programming. Weird that I go from knowing no programming to being able to add something like this in a week, but it seems that is the case. Usually programmers take months and months on things, so it makes me wonder if I am overlooking something to be able to do all of this so quickly.

This will probably LOOK bad, but get the job done. I will save "looks" and the payout function for last. Just like with the contest setup back wehn I made that... this just needs to be good enough to store the picks and I can always add in the payout function later if I don't have time to finish it by laucnh.

Hopefully I am able to finish it. I have to watch some Memphis games this week and want to watch some other games also, so it will be tough fitting in programming and watching games also. The first Memphis game is not until Thursday, so I have 2 days to concentrate on it then will be a bit distracted for the few days after it.

Unlike most other games... on MY game you will pick the winner of the play in game also. I never understood why they left that out! I guess to give people longer to submit their forms.

Unbelievable how tedious this is. This feature isn't going to take the most actual coding, but it is a TON of copying and pasting lines of coding with me then changing numbers ine ach line.

So anyway I successfully finished the function/form to add a bracket contest. I have to enter about 75 pieces of info on the form and then all of that has to be added as a row in the database! That's what took so long tonight setting that part up. In fact the row itself has about 150 columns!!!!! So technically when I submit the form it is entering something in 150 fields in the database! I was worried it may be slow, but it takes a fraction of a second.

Nice night's work. Now I need to make the hub page for tournaments, make the form for people to submit (thinking of that gives me a headache becuase it will be a LOT of twists to it and tedious also), have it entered into the DB, have a page then show your picks, results, stats, etc..., AND do checks to be sure people can't enter more than once.

I am going to make it cost an amount to enter (probably 100) then the jackpot will be some amount PLUS everybody's 100s all added together. So the more people enter, the bigger the prize in future years.

I worked hard just to get this part done, but it only took a few hours and it worked perfectly my first try.

edit: actually I realized all I "have" to get done in order to allow for signups immediately after the field is announced is to add the form itself for members to fill out. So I can do the other stuff such as stats and displaying your picks and the payout function all later. Would be good if I finish those by time they need to be used though which is about 8 days away.

tedious tedious and.... tedious.

I think I have things figured out decently enough where I will get it done, but it's a huge mass of coding to add. It's not so much that it's "hard" as it is "repetitive".

I now have finished the add form (but I need to remember to add point totals per round to it). I have finished the links to get you to the form you fill out to enter the contest. And I have STARTED the function for the form itself.

The hard part was getting the form to the point it is currently at. Now I THINK it's more a matter of me repeating some things.

To make your selections you will need to submit a form 7 times. Once for each round. (I am having you pick the play-in winner also, unlike other contests, so that is why there is 1 extra round).

So I have to set up that 7 part process now, which is annoying.

Also it will NOT look good AT ALL this first time. Thus far the only way I can think to do it is make dropdowns and you select the winner in each dropdown. It will get the job done, but it will be ugly!

If anyone has some idea on how to make it look better, let me know... I thought about having it say "(1) team A vs. (16) team B" and then a dropdown next to it. But it just seemed like it would be even uglier so I have only the dropdown now.

I'll have to worry about making it more "fancy" some other time. Too complicated.

Hopefully I don't have any issues come up the next few days. In theory I know how to get your picks from round 1 into round 2's dropdowns, round 2's into round 3's, etc... but I havent tried that part yet so.... I hope I do it properly.

I spent a lot of hours and I think I have it very close now. I just need to fix the problem that is causing the parse error when entering the betting system now, set up the tables for the form, set up inserts for the database, and not much else as far as stuff that MUST be done by Sunday night. I think I will have all of the "necessary" stuff done by late tonight. I got the hard part and tedious stuff out of the way.

So far in the 3 days I have been working on it I have added more than 750 new lines of coding. I am pretty proud of what I had to do to get the picks carrying over from round to round. It is a quite crafty method I came up with and it took me probably 500 of that 750 lines just for that complicated setup for teams where team names and seeds are all figured out by a complicated procedure involving numbers.

Nice. I figured out the issue. And now I tested. It is quite nice. Just to get your picks from one round into the dropdowns for the next round, it is a quite complicated method I came up with. It is working nicely. I think it's my favorite function I have written, although I wish it could be done simpler where it wouldn't be such a long process.

I am now done with all of the main stuff. Unbelievable I am able to meet these deadlines. lol I went all the way through a bracket and it worked perfectly. So I have 2 days left to fine tune it. I still need to at some point make a stats page and also something showing your full set of picks once you're done. May make a function to delete it if the deadline hasn't passed and then you can start over in case you changed your mind.

I also need to put in some checks and coding to take the points and update things here and there.

Then next week I can make the payout function.

I also need to decide how many points each round's picks will be worth.

I hope I can find 5-10 people to DO IT since I put in a lot of time making it and nothing gets used much here. I may even give a prize if some people play it. Depends how many. And has to be mainly people who already are members.

Sigh.

Well I am done and tested things and I think I fixed the bugs and everything.

So the good news is it will be ready to use when the brackets are announced later today. The bad news is it's not going to look fancy at all! And I still don't have anything showing your bracket once you finish it and I have nothing showing the true bracket as far as who wins each game.

I can add that later in the week though, but it would be NICE if I can think of a way to show YOUR OWN bracket immediately from when I start using it.

I'll try to add that this afternoon, but any way I think of to show it.... looks crappy.

Man... any ideas I have... I came up with too late to implement really. I wanted to allow multiple brackets per person (up to 3) and I just flat got that idea too late to really add that for this tourney probably.

Not that people are knocking down the door to use this anyway after I spent a lot of time on it. Sigh again.

I want to add some notes to the mybracket page or this would be ready now, before the brackets are even announced.

So I will open this probably within an hour of the announcements.

Adding this in an hour or two. I decided to add something to show your picks when you're done and it is a lot of coding to throw in at the alst minute, but I hated to open it before finishing this part.