Free online office pool advice please

[mrmagoo1974]

Ok, I want to start a pool this year at work, and i want to manage it online. Basically what I am asking here is what FREE online site is the best one to host my pool based on how i want to run it. Here is how I want it done:

Because there will be money involved I want to have TOTAL control over everything, and that INCLUDES data entry for every participant. Most all the free office pool sites i found online want to sign your people up on thier site and it lets them MAKE THIER OWN PICKS. Again i want TOTAL control over each pick for each person. I will be handing out a piece of paper for them to fill out every week, and of course will be collecting the $$ with the paper. I then want to enter in everyones picks myself.

However I would love it if the site would support a system where any of my players could log into our private pool at anytime to VIEW all picks made by them and other players, but have that be the ONLY purpose of them accessing the pool online.

Also it would be great if the site did automatic scoring as well (keeping track of wins and losses as a game finishes) I will be running a simple win/loss game every week, no spreads or anything like that. But this auto scoring feature is not nearly as big of a deal as my desires above.

I guess in a nutshell what i want is a place online that i can post all picks by each indivdual playing and have it viewable to all players who want to view it online. I will probally be handing out papers at the end of the week as well that has everyones pick on them before sunday, but I just thought this would be a cool alternitive for some people to view who is winning each week.

Thank you VERY much for any advice you can give me.

 

[shady859]

You are probably better off sticking to Excel and doing it yourself..

At my job we do college/pro football and college/pro basketball pick'em sheets, in addition to every other big sporting event pools lol. The guy who runs it is a computer nerd but he sticks with Excel and counting the wins himself. He says he does this because if he enters something wrong he has no way to change it once the game starts and since you gotta make the sheets to pass out why would you want to enter everything twice because whatever software you would use probably won't make attractive handouts for you.

We always have our sheets due by wednesday at midnight and then he throws them into Excel that night and hands out pick results sheets the next day so you have everyones elses picks easily accessible. Everyone likes getting the papers because it gives you something to do besides work and you can follow along crossing off games on sat/sun or all week for college/pro basketball.

Also this year we started something new to encourage more people to play every single week rather than just here and there like in previous years. $1 off each sheet sold would go into a grand prize pot and you kept a running tally of everyones weekly total to determine the big pot winners. You can split that up however among the top 3 or 4 ranked guys at seasons end. We have lots of players so it got to be pretty darn big by seasons end.

Also you might wanna weight some games like worth 2 or 3 points to make things more interesting and keep ties down. We always had monday/sunday night football as 2 points and a 3 point game of the week.

Just some ideas for ya from a long time established pool. Just keep it fun and simple to encourage more people to play (suckers willing to donate money). We don't use the line but he added the early line to the sheets he hands out on monday, again to help encourage amatuers since they feel like they know something about the game by looking at the spread.

I love pools and have made alot of money playing.