NCAAPOOL v. 1.20 1 Unregistered Copy





NCAAPOOL

A Pool Management Tool

by

Tom Cunningham






1 Introduction.


If you've ever organized a pool on the NCAA basketball
tournament, you know what a hassle it can be. First the easy
part: You make a lot of copies of the tournament tree from the
newspaper and distribute them and get everyone to fill them out
and returned to you in time. Then the REAL hassles start: Every
round you have to check a couple of dozen of these sheets and
tabulate the results in some sort of meaningful way. You give
out the results and everyone wants to know why they aren't
winning. You have to spend a couple of hours compiling detailed
individual statistics for each round to keep everyone satisfied.
It's a hassle. NCAAPOOL was created to eliminate that hassle.

NCAAPOOL was created to manage office pools for the annual
NCAA basketball tournament. Pool participants would fill out the
tournament tree found in any newspaper's sports section,
selecting who they think would win each game and each resulting
game between winners in previous rounds until the final
tournament winner emerged. There are currently 64 teams that
start the single-elimination tournament, so 63 games over the
span of 6 rounds, taking about two weeks, need to be played to
determine the ultimate winner.

The problem is that the pool participants want to know how
they are doing as the tournament progresses, and taking out their
choice sheets and marking them against the progress of the
tournament is a time-consuming pain. The problem gets worse when
different participants use different newspapers to get their
tournament tree setups, so there are different forms that slow
the tallying process and encourage mistakes.

Out of this came NCAAPOOL. Once the basic first-round team
structure is entered, everything is automatic. The pool
participants' choices are easy to enter even if they are using
different basic forms (since the underlying structure of the










NCAAPOOL v. 1.20 2 Unregistered Copy

tournament is set by the first-round pairings which NCAAPOOL
tracks automatically). The results of the tournament can be
entered on a round-by-round basis, and reports for both
individuals and the overall pool generated as you desire.
NCAAPOOL takes the hassle (and a good many of the potential
mistakes) out of organizing a pool.






2 Licensing Agreement and Registration.


NCAAPOOL has taken many hours to program and debug. It is
copyrighted software and it is not in the public domain. It is
distributed under the Shareware concept. You may try out the
software and distribute it freely (so long as both the program
and this documentation file are distributed together). You have
a limited license to use NCAAPOOL on a purely trial basis. If
you continue to use it you must register it by sending a check
for $10 plus $5 for shipping and handling to:




Tom Cunningham
2541 McKinnon Drive
Decatur, GA 30030-4538

When you register, you gain the right to continue to use
this software. In addition, I will send you the latest,
registered version of NCAAPOOL, and further updates will be made
available at nominal cost. (If you wish to simply register and
do not wish the latest, registered, version of the program,
simply send $10.)

You may distribute copies of NCAAPOOL only under the
condition that the program is unmodified and this complete
NCAAPOOL.DOC file is included.

Your registration makes products like these possible.
Thank you for your support!




















NCAAPOOL v. 1.20 3 Unregistered Copy





3 Registration.


To register NCAAPOOL fill in the information on this page
and send it in.

_____ I would like to register NCAAPOOL and receive the
latest, registered version of the program. I enclose a check for
$15.

_____ I would like to register NCAAPOOL, but I do not wish
the latest version of the program. I enclose a check of $10.




Send checks to:

Tom Cunningham
2541 McKinnon Drive
Decatur, GA 30030-4538



NAME: _____________________________________________________

ADDRESS: __________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

COMPUTER: _________________________________________________

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS:



























NCAAPOOL v. 1.20 4 Unregistered Copy







4 Running NCAAPOOL.


To start NCAAPOOL, simply copy the program NCAAPOOL.EXE
onto the disk or directory you intend to use (it is never a good
idea to work from your original disk. Always work with a copy).
Make sure the logged directory corresponds to the location of the
program (i.e., if you are running the program from the A: disk
drive, make sure you have the program on the disk in A: and have
an A> prompt, or put the program in, say, C:\NCAAPOOL, and change
to that directory), and type NCAAPOOL. The program takes it from
there, creating the three necessary data files and moving on to
setting up the tournament.




4.1 Setting up the tournament.

The NCAA tournament is comprised of four divisions: the
East, the Southeast, the Midwest, and the West. Each division has
16 teams, making a total of 64. The four division winners are
then paired in the semi-finals, and those two winners play in the
finals.

NCAAPOOL asks you to enter the 64 team names according to
their first-round sequence. It begins with Division 1 (see the
next paragraph for an explanation of Divisions), team 1. Type in
the team name and hit . You are then asked for team 2,
which plays team 1 in the first round (the team numbers are NOT
the seeding in the tournament). Similarly, team 3 plays team 4,
5 plays 6, and so on. Thus in round 2 (which NCAAPOOL handles
for you -- you only enter team names once) the winner of the 1
versus 2 game meets the winner of the 3 versus 4 game. All that
is happening is that you are entering the first round teams in
the sequence in which they appear in the beginning of the
tournament tree. You do the same thing with Division 2, 3, and 4
(the team numbers continue through 64 rather than resetting with
each Division -- I have found this to be less confusing). Every
16 teams you are asked to check your work, since everything in
the program works off of this initial tree. The team names
should appear in the same order as in the tournament tree in the
newspaper (with the teams in the first round games appearing next
to their opponent). See the example on the next page.














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EXAMPLE:

DIVISION 1

__(team 1 name*)___
__(team 2 name*)___ > --(winner of 1 v 2)--
> -- winner ... etc...
__(team 3 name*)___
__(team 4 name*)___ > --(winner of 3 v 4)--

.
.
.

*You enter only these names. NCAAPOOL tracks the rest of the
tournament for you.

Why NCAAPOOL does not use division names: The pairings in
the semi-final round are not always the same. That is, the
winner of the East division may play the winner of the Southeast
division one year, and next year play the winner of the West, or
the Midwest, or even the Southeast again. Because of this, I
haven't given the divisions names, just numbers. The winner of
Division 1 is assumed to meet the winner of Division 2 in the
semi-finals (and Division 3 meets Division 4). Look at the
organization of the tournament this year and make sure that you
make the correct pairings of divisions, as, again, entering the
64 teams in the proper initial order is critical. For example,
if the semi-finals have the winner of the East meeting the winner
of the Midwest and the winner of the Southeast meeting the winner
of the West, then the East and the Midwest must be Divisions 1
and 2 (or 3 and 4) and the Southeast and the West must then be
Divisions 3 and 4 (or 1 and 2).





EXAMPLE:

Semi-Finals Finals

__(Division 1 winner)___
__(Division 2 winner)___ > --(winner of 1 v 2)--

> --WINNER
__(Division 3 winner)___
__(Division 4 winner)___ > --(winner of 3 v 4)--

You really shouldn't worry too much about making a mistake
in setting up the tournament. As soon as you start entering
participants' choices, you'll see if you got it right. If you
make a mistake, simply exit NCAAPOOL and delete the file
MASTER.DAT. NCAAPOOL will then start over.










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4.2 Entering participants choices.

After you have entered the tournament structure, you are
asked the number of pool participants, their names, and their
choices. Since the entire structure of the tournament is
determined by the first-round setup you've already entered,
entering the choices of the participants is easy! Round 1
consists of 32 games, the winners of which enter round 2. The 16
round 2 winners move to round 3. The 8 round 3 winners go to
round 4, etc. NCAAPOOL tracks the outcomes of the games chosen
and presents you, the pool manager, with the appropriate team
names from which to chose for each game of each round. (Note: In
this version of NCAAPOOL you must enter all your participants
choices at once. The next version of NCAAPOOL will allow

participants' choices to be entered at any time. See section 5.)




4.3 Entering and updating the tournament results.

After the tournament structure and participants' choices
are entered the pool is set up and NCAAPOOL will ask if you have
round 1 results. If not, simply answer no, and run NCAAPOOL when
you get the first round outcome. Whenever you re-start NCAAPOOL,
it automatically brings you to the latest round for which it does
not have results. For example, if you exited NCAAPOOL after you
had everyones choices, but the tournament had yet to start, when
you re-start NCAAPOOL it will ask for round 1 results. If you
had already entered results for some rounds, it will ask
immediately for the appropriate round (if NCAAPOOL has the
complete tournament outcome, it will skip this entirely). Again,
since the tournament structure is determined by the first round,
NCAAPOOL will track the winners and the match-ups and simply
present you with the appropriate choices for the game.




4.4 Getting the results.

Any time you finish entering results, NCAAPOOL asks if you
would like results printed. First, NCAAPOOL asks if you would
like individual results. This prints the results for each
individual's choices for the tournament so far. If you would
like results for individual participants, they must be printed
because the results cannot be meaningfully displayed on the
screen (for example, if you print individual results at the end
of the tournament, each participant will see the result of 63
choices spread over 6 rounds).










NCAAPOOL v. 1.20 7 Unregistered Copy


After NCAAPOOL asks about individual reports, it offers a
tally of the overall pool, showing the number of correct choices
everyone has made. (This is the whole point of the pool!) This
can be printed, or displayed on the screen, or both.




4.5 Resetting NCAAPOOL for another tournament.

Whenever NCAAPOOL is started it checks for the existance
and correctness of three .DAT files. If it doesn't find them it
will create them. To re-use NCAAPOOL for another tournament,
simply erase the files MASTER.DAT, PLAYERS.DAT and OUTCOME.DAT.






5 What to look for in the future.


This version of NCAAPOOL is being rushed out in order for
it to be available in time for the March tournament, which means
that there is a considerable lag between the time it leaves me
and it gets to you. This version is sufficient to fully manage a
pool, but in the couple of months I have between now and the time
you read this, I will have added more analysis to the result
summary. Let me repeat that what you now have is a fully
implemented version of NCAAPOOL. Some additional information will
be added in the reporting of results, as will the ability to add
additional participants at any time, but nothing that is
essential for the operation of a pool. When you register, you
will receive the latest fully-registered edition of NCAAPOOL
(with at least these two additions).

Also in the future watch for NFLPOOL. This will help you
manage football pools that are organized two separate lines:
week-by-week choice, or a full-season.

Thank you for using and registering NCAAPOOL!