Cuddie Brae 30th May 2019

Back after a 3 week refurbishment of the Cuddie Brae. It is looking fresh and roomy and we had a good turnout for the return

New Look Cuddie Brae

The Cuddie Brae was looking great for our return last night. Now with a nice fresh and roomy look. They definitely put a lot of hard work into getting the venue ready to open and welcome our quizzers this week.

Winners

The winners again this week are S.A.D. for their third win in the past four weeks of the quiz. Performing out of their skin to win time and time again. These guys must spend their working week researching for their Thursday night adventure.

You will see below that the handicaps are resulting in a tighter finish every week. S.A.D. are now dangerously close to our undisputed best team, Between A Rock And A Hard Place. There will soon be nothing between them and a wee slip in the performance of S.A.D. will see them drop into a lower position on the final scoreboard. The ever high performing Rocks are just waiting to reclaim their throne!

New Teams

We had a number of new teams this week which is always a good thing. Of these, the best performers were Beyonce Knowalls finishing in fourth place. That is an achievement in its own since the new teams are at a disadvantage of not knowing how the quiz works and having to work more on that than answering the questions.

Our other new teams, Greasy Joes, The Twa Henz, The FT’s and Danape all came in at the bottom of the scoreboard. Next time will be better for them as they will be allocated a more accurate handicap.

I trust we will see some of the new teams back again in the near future.

Where Are You?

We have now had a total of 94 teams play at the Cuddie Brae. Most of these have been the occasional visitor to the area taking part just for fun on the odd Thursday. Others were regular competitors we haven’t seen for some time. You know who you are, where are you? I can see at least five ‘regular’ teams missing recently.

Bring yourselves back to the Cuddie, meet all our new people and have a chance to win some decent cash prizes.

Scoreboard

With the top three teams finishing within 41 points and the next six within 160 points, we can see that the handicapping is working well. The system is self-adjusting each week and I can see a definite closing of the starting handicaps for next week. With a wee tweak here and there from me until this works just the way it should, we will soon see every team get a win.

Remember that the handicapping is designed to give every team an equal chance of winning. If every team performs to their best every week, and the questions fall into their areas of knowledge, then every team would win an equal number of times. Given the 13 teams we had last night, a perfect set of circumstances would see each team win on average 1 in 13 times they play.

A perfect set of circumstances will never be achieved and the lion’s share of the wins will ultimately go to the lower handicap teams who typically have a steady game. They perform well on almost every occasion they play and will continue to get more than the average number of wins. This being said, 3 wins in 4 for S.A.D. shows just how well they have played in recent weeks, this won’t continue.

Changes

I have introduced a change in how new teams start in the quiz. Up until now they have been given the average score of all other teams with a handicap to get them started. I have found that this is a bit unfair on the existing teams. Although most of the new teams do struggle a bit to learn the game, how to play, some of them are pretty good with the questions.

We have had a couple of new teams roll in with a decent win. This is good for the quiz in general because they will want to come back but I feel it may be a bit unfair to the rest of you as well as giving the new teams a false sense of genius.

From next week, new teams will start on a score equal to 2/3 of the average score. This should help to balance out the starting scores a bit. As always, I will see how this works out over the coming weeks and will make any adjustments needed to keep it fair. That being said, there is no way to guarantee there will never be a new team so good that they will still run away with it. This at least will reduce the chance of it happening. It will also give new teams a more realistic outlook on their chances of winning in future quizzes as well as giving them the motivation to do better.

Jackpot Games

Neither of the Jackpot games were won this week meaning they continue forward to next week.

The Open the Box jackpot was attempted both times by one of our new teams, which failed to win either the jackpot of £435 or second attempt at £220. This jackpot will now increase to £470 next week.

I introduced a new game last night. Take It or Leave It. Played just like Deal Or No Deal (Copyrighted name). Starting with 14 boxes the player takes one as their ‘Home Box’ which they keep until the end. I forgot to do this last night but hey, what can I say, I’ll do better next time.

The player removes one box at a time revealing the cash value inside the box. Currently this starts at £1 with a jackpot of £50. This will increase after the next few weeks and will, in time, become a very decent jackpot. I had to put up the cash to start the game and the jackpot will grow once the game has become self sufficient.

Eventually we end up with 2 boxes, the Home Box and one other. The player then chooses one of those boxes and receives whatever the cash value is inside that box.

Our player last night, settled early for a £7 payout. When we played to the end of the game we found, that had he continued, he would have gone home with £11.

Next week’s box values remain the same with a jackpot of £50.

Extra Screen

During the refurbishment, an additional screen was added to the area where we play. I invested in wireless HDMI so I could run the screens without the need to run leads. This worked fine for one of the screens, at the bottom end of the room, with the one nearby linked by an HDMI lead. However, it appears that the equipment can only run one screen on wireless so the new screen could not be used.

I will work on this in the next few days. I note that the wireless kit can run on 2G or 5G so my intention is to try to run both separately. Fingers crossed, this should result in me being able to run both additional monitors on different frequencies so there will be no need for an additional HDMI lead.

If this doesn’t work then a long lead it will be. It may take a couple of weeks to get this right but it will be fully operational as soon as possible. This should make it a bit better for you guys sitting in the raised seating area.

See you all next Thursday at 8pm

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