Hello everyone, Shaun here.
Today I'll be telling you about three major improvements that we've been working on during the first weeks of the season, based on your feedback. The changes are live now so any feedback is welcomed via the intercom button or via email
As always, we don't stop working on Pickwatch. More changes are coming this season and in the New Year too, so keep an eye on our development blogs for updates.
1) Removing $50 'Stake' Limits in Supercontest
As of today, you will be able to stake any amount of your Pickwatch Coins on any game you pick. Yes, that means if you really love the Jets to win at 12/1, you can bet all of your virtual dollars on them.
Why are we doing this? First off, you requested it!
Secondly, removing the limits will make every player have to consider where they spend their coins and make it the true test of skill it was designed to be. It is also more accurate and allows you to truly put your money where your mouth is and win BIG just as you can in real life!
2) Save Picks Button
This is a feature we have been working on for a few weeks to vastly improve performance for you. From Week 8, there will be one more natural step at the end of the process to make picks - you'll need to save your picks.
Any time you make a change, you'll need to hit that save button and you'll get a message advising that your picks have been saved for that week. Here's an animation of how it works:
As you can see, the button will pulse to signify that you have picks to make. It will also track with your screen as you scroll down the pick form, so you won't lose sight of it, and you'll get a warning if you've changed anything and try to navigate away!
Why have we done this? Two reasons: Performance and User Requests.
On the performance side, you'll notice an immediate improvement to how quickly the platform now registers your button clicks. No more 'spinners' while your pick auto-saves and no more time delay waiting to make your next pick.
For user requests, we found that this is something that you as players were looking for after making your picks - particularly new players! It's a natural thing to want to 'confirm' or 'submit' or 'save' picks after making them, and this adds that final stamp at the end of your selections!
Copy Picks to Private Leagues
Anyone who is in a private league (or 50 in my case) will know the annoyance of having to pick the same things over and over. Well, we did away with that with the new COPY button that sits next to the left of the save button.
Now, once your picks are saved, you can copy them to EVERY private league you are in, or just to some if you like. You have complete control!
Here's a little walkthrough for you to follow - just make your picks, save them, then press copy and you'll be presented with the option to select which leagues you copy to. They're all selected by default. Just confirm that and you're set.
One thing we can't copy are stakes. Those are unique to each league because they rely on you having enough coins in each league to do it. We'll work on a long term solution to this over the offseason, but for now you'll need to add stakes manually if you use them in your private leagues.
Future developments
We think these changes will have a subtle but important impact on how you make your picks on Pickwatch. As always, feel free to reach out with questions and suggestions.
The rest of the season will be focused largely on helping you make better picks and bigger challenges. We have our fabled Pickwatch pro algorithm pumping out an 83% success rate when compared to the expert consensus, which we intend to launch by season end. We're also expanding to other sports as rapidly as we can, likely beginning with Baseball in 2021.
Take care of yourselves
Shaun and the Pickwatch team.