Confidence rules

Assign every value from 1 to N exactly once, submit the whole card at once, and lock together at the round’s earliest kickoff.

This version

Version: confidence-1.0
Written: July 29, 2026
Sport: Professional American football
Tiebreaker: None. Ties genuinely share a rank.

A competition is played under the version it was created with. A later version does not reach back into a competition already running, so the version shown inside a competition is the one that governs it — check there before settling an argument with this page.

Objective

Earn the most confidence points by selecting each event winner and assigning larger values to the selections you believe are more likely to win. Confidence is a weight you choose, not a spread, a price, or a multiplier the product sets for you.

What makes a valid card

For a round with N eligible events, a valid card must:

select one of the two teams in every event; and
assign every integer from 1 through N exactly once.

The card is submitted atomically — all of it, or none of it. A partial card, a duplicate confidence value, a missing value, or a missing winner choice is invalid and cannot receive a server receipt. There is no partial credit for a partly-submitted card, because there is no partly-submitted card.

Examples of valid and invalid confidence cards in a four-event round.
A four-event round, values assigned	Result
4, 3, 2, 1	Valid
1, 2, 3, 4	Valid — order of entry does not matter
4, 4, 2, 1	Invalid: a value is used twice
4, 3, 2	Invalid: a value is missing
5, 3, 2, 1	Invalid: 5 is outside 1–4
Values complete, one winner unselected	Invalid: every event needs a winner

Lock behaviour

The entire card locks at the round lock: the earliest eligible event’s authoritative kickoff or observed start, whichever occurs first. Later events in the round do not extend it.

Before that lock, a participant may replace the entire card as often as they like; the latest valid server-receipted revision is the card of record. If no complete valid card holds a pre-lock receipt, the participant scores zero for the round.

Server time decides acceptance, a card arriving at the exact lock timestamp is rejected, and a kickoff delayed after the lock does not reopen it. A kickoff moved earlier before the lock moves the lock earlier with it.

Scoring

Points awarded for each official outcome under rule version confidence-1.0.
Official outcome	Points earned
Selected team wins	Its effective confidence value
Selected team loses	0
Official tie, cancellation, no-contest, or moved outside the round	Void. The event is removed and every card’s remaining values are compressed.
No complete valid pre-lock card	0

Effective values, and why they compress

A void event would otherwise reward or punish whatever value a participant happened to place on it, which is arbitrary. So scoring removes all void events and compresses each submitted card’s remaining confidence order to 1..M, where M is the number of non-void events. Relative order is preserved; the gaps close.

A five-event card with confidence order A equals 1 through E equals 5. When C is void, the effective values become A equals 1, B equals 2, D equals 3, E equals 4.
Event	Submitted	Effective, with C void
A	1	1
B	2	2
C	3	Void
D	4	3
E	5	4

Round and season totals

A round score is the sum of effective confidence values for correct selections. The maximum possible score in a round with M non-void events is:

M × (M + 1) ÷ 2

So a four-event round is worth at most 10, and a five-event round at most 15. A season score is the sum of finalized round scores.

Standings and ranking

Participants rank by total season confidence points, descending, using standard competition ranking — 1, 2, 2, 4.

Equal totals share a rank. There is no launch tiebreaker, so round co-winners and final co-champions are possible and are displayed as shared rather than ordered.

A round is provisional until 24 hours after its last eligible event is official-final, then final, and corrected if a later authoritative change arrives.

Visibility before and after the lock

The whole card stays private to its participant until the round locks. Because the card locks as one unit, there is no window in which part of it is public.

After the lock, submitted cards are visible to the community — winners and values both, since the value is the interesting part. An invalid or absent card is displayed as not submitted. Draft contents are never exposed, not even to show that a draft existed.

Worked examples

A four-event non-void round, so confidence values are exactly 1, 2, 3, 4. Correct picks land at 4 and 2.
6 points.
A card assigns 4 twice.
Invalid. The server does not receipt it, so no card of record exists.
A complete card reaches the server at the exact round lock.
Rejected. If no earlier valid receipt exists, the round scores zero.
One of four events is later declared a no-contest.
The remaining confidence order compresses to 1, 2, 3 on every card and the entire round is rescored, not hand-adjusted.

Corrections

Any change to an event from scored to void, or from void to scored, recalculates every card’s effective values and rescores the round. It is never a hand adjustment to one participant’s total, because compression changes what everyone else’s values are worth too.

The shared append-only correction process applies: the original card, result, and score are preserved; actor, time, reason, evidence, and scope are recorded; the same deterministic scorer reruns; the change appears in the competition’s correction log; and materially affected participants are notified. No interface edits a standings total directly.

Members can flag an apparent issue until 48 hours after a round is finalized, and Clutchhall still fixes an objectively verified error found later. How to report a scoring question.