| Help/Frequently Asked Questions | ||
How do I
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Enter a team? Simply select the 'ENTER TEAM NOW' button from the main page, and then follow the instructions from there. Make sure that you're entering a legal team (i.e. the total rating is at least 41), and that you've provided all the relevant details about yourself. |
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Change my team? When the competition starts, you will see an 'EDIT TEAM' button on the side banner when viewing your team. This will allow you to make changes to your team during the competition. You can make a maximum of twelve changes, and a maximum of four changes per week - and your team must remain valid after each change. Note that, if you change your team while a game is in progress (or after 10am on the start day of that game), the change won't take effect until the end of that game. |
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Find out how my team is doing? The table of teams will be visible on the main homepage. Clicking on your team will give a detailed breakdown of scores for each of your players. |
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When is my score updated? The scores are updated every 5 minutes. Of course, the scores will only change while there is a match on (i.e. from about 11am to 6pm BST almost every day this Summer). |
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View my team? Simply click on your teamname on the main homepage. There are two alternative views for your team: 'Details' or 'Overview'. The Details page gives more information about your players, while Overview gives more information about recent events involving your team. |
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View the pages from a WAP-enabled phone? A WAP interface has been on my todo list for slightly longer than WAP has officially been in existence :-). Other technology enhancements that i've been toying with are a Jabber (instant message) event messaging system, an RSS feed, and stylesheet personalisation. |
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Find out when the season ends? The last games of the season finish on the 24th September. |
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Where do the rules and player ratings come from? The basic rules and player ratings are all taken from the official Daily Telegraph Fantasy cricket competition (check the link in the 'Links' section from the homepage). Note that, this season the Daily Telegraph has different rules to this competition (the scoring is different, and they do not include international matches). |
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How does it all work? All the code for this site is written in Perl. Every day, a program starts up which checks the Ananova cricket webpage for currently active matches. These pages are automatically downloaded, parsed, and analysed every 15 minutes during the day. Every players performance is stored, and from this the fantasy teams performances can be calculated. Most of the webpages are then generated dynamically on request - allowing the pages to be customised for each team/preference. All this happens with virtually no human intervention. I sometimes have to update the list of matches, 'unknown' players, and check for problems (for example some counties have players with the same name which can cause minor confusion) - however it should 'just work'. |
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How do I contact someone to get help? Either email me or come and visit me in Taipei! |
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