Here at Fantasy Rugby Geek, when all is said and done, we’re just massive Rugby fans and whether we are watching as a fan, have valuable fantasy points at stake or maybe have a cheeky punt on the game, we love it. With this in mind we love all kinds of games around the sport, not just fantasy, and one area that is growing rapidly is the world of rugby predictor games.
Predictor games are brilliant, especially if you don’t have as much time to plan and execute your fantasy rugby game. You can just log in, predict the results and then sit back and enjoy the games.
Today we are checking out 3 of the biggest predictor games in place for this year’s Gallagher Premiership; Rugby Predictions, SuperBru and the Official Gallagher Premiership Predictor Game.
What Are Rugby Predictor Games?
Rugby Predictor games are extremely simple yet surprisingly challenging games. The aim of the game is to log in each week, look at the fixtures lined up for that week and predict the outcome of the match. The more accurate your prediction is, the better you do. It is a marathon, not a sprint and over the course of the season, the most knowledgeable players always rise to the top. It’s a great way to stay focused on the season if maintaining your fantasy team is too much, and can take as little as 5 minutes each week to maintain.
The Games
Rugby Predictions
Rugby Predictions is a simple and well delivered game, covering Premiership Rugby, Pro 14 and Six Nations this season as well as the Rugby World Cup in the future.
Signing up is easy and the game itself involves predicting the outcome of each game as well as the winning margin. The scoring is based on how close you are to the actual winning margin, with the points scoring being as follows…
- 10 points for predicting the correct home/away win margin
- 4 points for predicting the correct home/away win margin within 3 points
- 3 points for predicting the correct home/away win margin within 4-6 points
- 2 points for predicting the correct home/away win margin within 7-10 points
- 1 point for predicting the correct home/away winner
- 5 points for predicting all correct home/away winners in any single round
Points are accumulated over the course of the season either in public leagues or you can also choose to join a private league to share with your mates.
There are some great prizes on offer. For the armchair fan, you can win your club or Nations jersey for winning any of the main public leagues, however they are also supporting the grassroots game, so you can be given the option to swap your prize for training equipment for your club team. There are also prize draws for round winners offering branded merchandise; mugs, stickers, travel mugs. All in all, we’re big fans of Rugby Predictions, it’s a great game to dip into and their support of the grassroots game is a really positive touch.
Make sure you check out their blog for tips and advice on how to get the advantage over your mates, and if you want to learn more of how to play, check out this video…
SuperBru
SuperBru is a classic game and one of the original Predictor games. They cover a wide range of tournaments, obviously including Premiership Rugby, Super Rugby and the Rugby World Cup, but also ranging out into the likes of Major League Rugby, Currie Cup, Mitre 10 Cup and the Shute Shield. Not only that, but they provide games for many other sports including Rugby League, Rugby Sevens, NFL, F1, Football and Golf among many many others. They also offer up Fantasy games (including Six Nations, Super Rugby and Champions Cup) and their short-form fantasy game, Superstars. It is a bit of a sports fan’s paradise!
Their Rugby Predictor Games are where they started out and as such they have a large and loyal community of players. It is a simple and well executed game. To play simply select who you think will win and by what margin and based on the actual result, you will gain points that accumulate over the course of the season.
The scoring is as follows…
- Win Point (WP) – If you correctly predict the outcome of a match (the correct winning team, or a draw), you will earn a Win Point. During league games, the WP is typically valued at 1 pt but, it can rise to 1.5, 2 or 3 in knockout stages to reflect the greater difficulty in picking winners amongst more competitive teams. If you miss a pick, you can still earn a WP through a default pick. A default is a pick for the team the community most expects to win. You are eligible for 7 default picks in Gallagher Premiership.
- Margin Point (MP) – If your margin prediction is within 5 of the actual margin, you will earn a Margin Point valued at 0.5 pt. You can earn a MP even if your outcome is wrong in close situations: e.g. if you pick the Blue team by 2 and the Red team wins by 1, your margin prediction is 3 away from the actual margin and you qualify for MP.
- Bonus Point (BP) – If you get the outcome right and your margin prediction is the closest in your pool and within 15 points of the actual margin, you will score a Bonus Point valued at 1 pt, but, if more than one player qualifies, the BP is shared, down to a minimum value of 0.25pts. Because each pool contains different players, your pick might be the closest in one pool but not in another. You’ll earn BP in the first but not in the second. The Bonus Point is only used inside pools: not on the global or country leaderboards.
- Grand Slam Point (GSP) – If you correctly predict the outcome of every match in a round, you will score a Grand Slam Point. GSP value can vary by round. In Gallagher Premiership the GSP values are 2.00 pts (only in the league rounds, not the knockout rounds). There is no GSP if there are fewer than 4 matches in a round.
There are a huge range of public and private leagues that you can join, some of which have prizes on offer, so have a dig around the site and see what you can find!
Official Gallagher Premiership Predictor Game
As in previous years, there is an Official Gallagher Premiership Predictor Game. Primarily it is a mobile game on the Official Premiership Rugby App.
The game itself is as simple as Rugby Predictor Games get. Simply predict the winner (or if it will be a draw) of each match in a match round, and that’s it!
You get a point for a correct prediction, and they offer a prize draw for weekly winners of two Gallagher Premiership Rugby Final 2019 tickets, and the top five in the leaderboard after Round 22 will win two hospitality tickets to the Gallagher Premiership Rugby Final 2019 at Twickenham.
It’s incredibly simple and worth signing up for the prizes alone!
The Edge
Crunch the data
There are a wealth of great sites out there offering up statistical analysis as to the likely outcomes in the games. One of our personal favourites is Rugby Vision, which takes an incredible level of data to establish the likely outcomes, and more often than not, they are right!
Consider the impact of the international break
During international windows when Premiership matches are played in parallel, teams will often be forced to field weaker teams and form can go out of the window (remember Saracens’ losing streak last season while the internationals were away…). This can also be the case when the teams have a big semi-final or final coming up that they may want to rest players for. Review the starting XV’s and pick accordingly.
What are the bookies saying?
The bookies are rarely wrong, their livelihood depends on it, so check out the match odds, and in particular the handicap odds to see their opinion on how the game will go to help you make your decision.
Dodge the draws
With big points on offer for the draw in a number of Rugby Predictor Games, choosing the draw can be extremely tempting. However, draws happen less than 3% of the time so it simply is not worth the risk.
If you back your Fantasy Rugby skills to lead you to Fantasy Gallagher Premiership glory and win you some stash while you are at it, then join our public fantasy league on The Rugby Magazine fantasy game, where a Fantasy Rugby Geek Trucker Hat will be on offer for the winner of the league. To join, Sign up to the game here & go to Leaderboards > Public Leagues and join “Fantasy Rugby Geek”. Good luck!
Love Stash???
In addition to stocking all of the kit for the new season, Lovell Rugby are currently running some great weekly deals, where there are some amazing bargains to be had, as well as the remainder of their end of season sale with up 80% off all kinds of great kit including rugby boots, international & club rugby shirts, protection, coaching, training, nutrition and rugby leisurewear. Don’t sleep on these amazing deals and get over to Lovell Rugby!
Looking for more Fantasy Rugby insight and Resources?
If you want some more sources to help you finalise your decisions, go to our resources page where you’ll find all this year’s Gallagher Premiership fantasy games, all the stats sources, injury news, team news, fantasy relevant rugby betting odds and tons of other useful information.
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