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Tuesday, June 17, 2008:
"U.S. Open" prize winners:
Best ball: Long Island Bytes
Worst Ball: lockhart3 (tiebreaker)

There are four tournaments between the U.S. Open and British Open. The next prize contest will cover those four weeks - the "Open Faced Sandwich" contest.

Sunday, June 15, 2008:
Trading for the Travelers Championship has been enabled on Sunday night, even though the U.S. Open playoffs will take place on Monday. The playoffs will not impact any scoring. Teams which have the eventual winner will have their available trades augmented on Monday night.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008:
"Spring to the Open" prize winners:
Best ball: Nuclear Golfers
Worst ball: Pellie

Best ball and worst ball prizes will be provided for the U.S.Open. Remember also that the U.S.Open is not eligible to be a mulligan week for the full season standings.

Sunday, April 13, 2008:
Masters prize winners:
Best ball: Sombrero (-43)
Worst ball: McNultys (+58)

The "Spring to the Open" Contest starts this week, and includes the eight tournaments leading up to the U.S. Open.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008: I have now adjusted the standings program to reflect the "mulligan rule". For the full season competition, each team gets to throw out its worst weekly result - except that major tournament scores cannot be excluded. A few explanatory notes:

• Mulligan scoring will only be applied for scoring over the entire season, with all weeks included -for both best ball and worst ball scoring. If you select any other weekly option, mulligans will be ignored in the standings report.
• This means that if you want to see full season standings without the mulligan adjustment, you can simply run the standings with AT&T Pebble Beach selected as the start week. While that is technically the same as "entire season", the program will not apply mulligans in this instance.
• To see the mulligan details for any team, position the cursor over that team's season total score. The details will appear in a title bar, just like the foursomes appear when you hover over any team name. If there is a tie for the mulligan week, the most recent week will be cited.

Monday, April 7, 2008:
The first GuruGolf Contest of the season is now completed. The winners of the "March to the Masters" Contest are:
Bestball: Liters2
Worstball: WB-jeffG.

Sunday, February 3, 2008:
The preseason period has ended. All rosters have been cleared, and trades and cash values have been reset. There is effectively no limit on trading this week; once rosters freeze on Thursday, you will have 4 trades to use starting next week (or 5 if you happen to have the winner of the AT&T Pebble Beach tournament).

As a reminder, there is a tool available to help you evaluate golfer results for any GuruGolf event, including those in prior years. Here is the link: gallcards.pl. For example, you can use it to evaluate hole-by-hole performance for every golfer in the field of the Nissan Open in 2005-07.

Sunday, January 20, 2008:
Welcome! And to those of you who played in last year's game, Welcome back!

The first tournament for GuruGolf 2008 will be the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, with the first round starting on February 7. You will not be able to set your roster for that tournament until the beginning of that week. In the meantime, we will have two preseason events, allowing you to learn (or reacquaint yourself with) the basic operations, and giving me a chance to simultaneously field test the system. There is no requirement to participate in preseason events, nor is there any tangible carryover advantage for the regular season. All rosters will be emptied prior to the AT&T National Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and all team cash will be reset, so everyone will start on an equal footing. Your participation in the preseason weeks is purely voluntary.

The game will be substantially the same as last year. In concert with the change in the PGA Tour schedule, the GuruGolf season will end in early September with the BMW Championship.

Please review the rules page. "Mulligan scoring" will again be used to determine the full season results, which essentially allows each team to throw out its worst tournament score during the season. The only exception is that each of the four Majors must be included, and cannot be thrown out. The mulligan rule is designed to give every team "forgiveness" for one unfortunate week, whether it is due to lousy golfer selection, or vacation, or forgetfulness, or whatever.

The provisional golfer rule is the only material change from last year. This year, a golfer can only be replaced by a provisional golfer if he fails to complete any holes. (The previous rule allowed for replacement in a golfer failed to complete the first round.) If you select a provisional golfer in any week, please be sure that you understand how it is applied. Each season, some managers select a provisional golfer who is effectively worthless, when that golfer is too expensive to be able to replace any golfer in the foursome. For example, if your four golfers are all moderately priced and you have little spare cash, do not select Tiger Woods as your provisional golfer, as it won't do any good. Most managers choose to designate a provisional golfer who costs less than the sum of the roster's cheapest player plus any unspent cash. By doing that, you would be sure that the provisional golfer could replace any golfer in your foursome if needed (subject to the potential cost of buying an extra trade, if required to make the provisional substitution.)

Although I have retained all GuruGolf registrations from last season, all teams and team names have been erased. You may manage up to 10 separate teams under a single registration. You may rename a team after it has been created, but you may not completely delete a team.

Standings will continue to list both the team name and the manager name. By default, your manager name will be your login name, unless you elected to change it last year. If you wish to use a different manager name for display purposes, you can specify that name on the "My Account" page. Note that changing your manager name will not change your login name. It will simply keep your login name private. If you specified an alternate manager name for display last year, that information has been retained.

At the bottom of the "Manage Roster" page, you will continue to see a chronological record of each transaction made for that team since the last freeze. In the event there is a question on your roster moves, this will serve to document your recent actions. This is provided solely for informational purposes, and has no direct bearing on game play. Just be aware that this historical log is provided, in case you need to review your moves for the week. It's usually out of sight, but all you need to do is scroll down to find it.

All golfers have been repriced since the end of last season. In setting initial prices for 2008, recent World Golf Rankings and last year's GuruGolf performance were considered. Price changes will be processed for the two preseason tournaments, and actual starting prices for the regular season will include those adjustments.

The repricing algorithm this season will be the same as that used in 2007, with one exception. This year, price change sensitivities will be increased by approximately 25%. This will be most noticeable for the top golfers each week, as their prices may rise by as much as an additional $30-$50. As before, each golfer will be scored based on how he performs relative to the field, and relative to the difficulty of each hole. A birdie on a hole which is birdied by only a few golfers will be worth much more than a birdie on an easy hole. Pars will also be considered, which will also benefit golfers who par difficult holes. Each of the 72 holes will be separately "handicapped" based on actual tournament results, so that even alternate pin placements will be implicitly considered. While the general magnitude of price changes will be comparable to prior years, the new system will more significantly reward golfers who provide distinctive value. In addition, golfers who fail to make the cut will not automatically decline in value, as they will be repriced under the same algorithm. However, because those golfers will not be able to "beat the field" for the missing holes, those price changes will still decline in the vast majority of cases.

The official standings for this game will include the results of all 31 regular season events (adjusted for the mulligan). However, the standings program will provide a number of alternative scoring periods. Once again, one of these alternatives will be "even week" and "odd week" scoring. If you wish to manage your team(s) without a need for trade conservation, you may choose to set your rosters every other week, skipping any transactions (and scoring) for the intervening weeks. Since 2 trades are awarded each week, you would have at least 4 trades available to use in alternate weeks, and could manage your rosters without consideration of upcoming events. This scoring feature will evaluate all teams on a consistent basis, whether or not those teams are being managed every week or not. You do not need to specify a team as an "even" or "odd" week team. You may, however, wish to name your team in such a way as to easily identify the underlying strategy. Be aware that no prizes will be awarded based on even or odd week scoring.

Prior year GuruGolf histories for all golfers are still available. Although the price change link for each player will bring up a page of 2008 GuruGolf history (which is pretty useless at the beginning of the season), that page will contain a link back to 2007 history (which will in turn provide links back to 2006 and 2005 and 2004, if you are a real glutton for statistical overload). Only events covered during the each previous GuruGolf season are listed. The same will be true for 2008.

To get started, click on the 'My Account' link in the upper left, and create one or more teams. You can then start filling your roster on the 'Manager Roster' page. Hopefully, everything is intuitive.

Have I forgotten anything?

Oh yeah. Enjoy the game!

Guru