Fantasy Football - SIGN UP SIGN UP! We go again Saturday

[the flying pig]

...Now I'm not 11 and 25p isn't a lot of money (I'm something of a big shot)...

pff, you and KW are just the same, a couple of show-off gordon gecko fantasists...


back on the subject of fantasy league, i ended up completely butchering my initial selection [skrtel is apparently an injury doubt, and the rest of the slovak defenders look flaky]... i think i concluded that the only real certainty in the WC [the further you go out from the start of the tournament, the more injuries and surprises around form, fitness, & plain old luck kick in] is that brazil will give PKR an extremely sound beating in their first game. So I've loaded up on, notwithstanding the relative ordinariness of their attacking options, brazilian attacking players, specifically kaka & luis fabiano, and made tweaks elsewhere accordingly...

[eric olthwaite]

I remember stickers being an odd currency when growing up. I used to absolutely love buying them, but trying to fill a book takes up every last penny of pocket money. I don't think I ever actually completed a book.

What you need is some statto type (TFP?) who could work out how many packs you'd need to buy to get, say, a 98% chance of filling the book given that the more you buy, the more doubles you'll have (assuming no swapsies). Hats off to whoever came up with it; it's just so fantastically cynical that it's aimed at kids with pennies but spend each time, but to actually complete one of the damn things would cost a (relative) fortune.

Being not entirely innocent m'self, I've encouraged the lad to start at least four types: Panini; Match Attax; Adrenalyn XL and summat else. My take on this is that he ends up without any particular focus on trying to fill any of them, and therefore gives up.

Mind, it's better than sweets I s'pose.

[Quiffy]

forgot to add that originally the panini stickers were bought for my lad aged 7 instead of sweets.

except i'm the one who's buying them and sticking them in now - he got bored of that bit once we got a swapsie of patrick kisnorbo. our local butcher's the trading capital of the neighbourhood. he's got no kids and a nearly full album and he gives my boy the pick of his swapsies.

my boy's also good for chatting to random women - they think he's cute.

[MightyWhite]

I remember stickers being an odd currency when growing up. I used to absolutely love buying them, but trying to fill a book takes up every last penny of pocket money. I don't think I ever actually completed a book.

What you need is some statto type (TFP?) who could work out how many packs you'd need to buy to get, say, a 98% chance of filling the book given that the more you buy, the more doubles you'll have (assuming no swapsies). Hats off to whoever came up with it; it's just so fantastically cynical that it's aimed at kids with pennies but spend each time, but to actually complete one of the damn things would cost a (relative) fortune.

Or you could do what I used to do and take advantage of the page at the back that allows you to send off for specific stickers in order to complete the collection.

[the flying pig]

...What you need is some statto type (TFP?) who could work out how many packs you'd need to buy to get, say, a 98% chance of filling the book given that the more you buy, the more doubles you'll have (assuming no swapsies)...

in general terms it's a relatively well-known problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem

how many stickers are there in a typical panini album?

[Phil LUFC]

...What you need is some statto type (TFP?) who could work out how many packs you'd need to buy to get, say, a 98% chance of filling the book given that the more you buy, the more doubles you'll have (assuming no swapsies)...

in general terms it's a relatively well-known problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem

how many stickers are there in a typical panini album?

If the virtual one is anything to go by: 32 teams each with 12 stickers each (11 players and a country flag/badge), doubles for each stadium, 12? stadiums, around 10 other random things like world cup trophy and ball. So around 420 ish stickers in total.

[the flying pig]

...What you need is some statto type (TFP?) who could work out how many packs you'd need to buy to get, say, a 98% chance of filling the book given that the more you buy, the more doubles you'll have (assuming no swapsies)...

in general terms it's a relatively well-known problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem

how many stickers are there in a typical panini album?

If the virtual one is anything to go by: 32 teams each with 12 stickers each (11 players and a country flag/badge), doubles for each stadium, 12? stadiums, around 10 other random things like world cup trophy and ball. So around 420 ish stickers in total.

OK, well i'm just blindly reading the formula from wiki but it seems to me that it works like:

Your first sticker - prob it's 'need' rather than 'got' 420 in 420
Your second sticker - prob it's 'need' rather than 'got' 419 in 420
Your third sticker - prob it's 'need' rather than 'got' 418 in 420
...

So how many would you have to buy? it seems the answer is nlog(n), where n is 420

so 2,537 stickers... at 6 per pack that's 423 packs. how much would that cost? a couple of hundred quid?

that's with no swopsies though. no-one would be foolish enough to seriously try and complete an album without swopsies.

[Phil LUFC]

That also assumes that there's an equal number of each sticker, I always got the impression that certain stickers were rare, and therefore the number needed might go up?

[gazurtoids]

Don't the manufacturers always claim that stickers are produced in equal quantities?

[the flying pig]

Don't the manufacturers always claim that stickers are produced in equal quantities?

as if you'd believe a word those cunts say. it's a well-known fact that only a few dozen copies of the england shiny from the mexico 86 album were ever printed. although the gary lineker one was surprisingly common.

[thechubbyone]

I'm also pretty sure you always get at least one big star into each pack. That way a first time/casual purchaser wouldn't be put off by having a load of Slovenian no-marks.

[gazurtoids]

I'm also pretty sure get at least one big star into each pack. That way a first time/casual purchaser wouldn't be put off by having a load of Slovenian no-marks.

What fraction of the total stickers do you consider to feature a big star? I wouldn't be surprised if about 1/6th of the total stickers were desirable in one way or another (i.e., an attacking player from one of the top 8 countries in the world or a PL-based player, or a shiny or something). You do still get 6 sticker per pack, don't you? I haven't done one since WC2006...

[Quiffy]

in general terms it's a relatively well-known problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem

how many stickers are there in a typical panini album?

TFP - there's 638 stickers in the real panini album, and 5 in a pack.

how much pocket money does my son need to have a realistic chance of completing the album?

[MightyWhite]

When I was 16 I did some agency work at a Panini Swap Shop at Peterborough. Basically a big tent filled with boxes of stickers and loads of kids exchanging their swaps. Perhaps they still do this?

[the flying pig]

in general terms it's a relatively well-known problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem

how many stickers are there in a typical panini album?

TFP - there's 638 stickers in the real panini album, and 5 in a pack.

how much pocket money does my son need to have a realistic chance of completing the album?

638? fuck. well, it's n.ln(n), so, er, 4120 stickers, 824 packs, sorry.

it's only approximate. if you were lucky you could do it quicker, and if unlucky it could take longer. trading duplicates is the way forward.

[Quiffy]

in general terms it's a relatively well-known problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem

how many stickers are there in a typical panini album?

TFP - there's 638 stickers in the real panini album, and 5 in a pack.

how much pocket money does my son need to have a realistic chance of completing the album?

638? fuck. well, it's n.ln(n), so, er, 4120 stickers, 824 packs, sorry.

it's only approximate. if you were lucky you could do it quicker, and if unlucky it could take longer. trading duplicates is the way forward.

cheers - £412 - bargain. you'd be able to sell it on ebay in a couple of years for about £9 i'm sure.

[the flying pig]

...cheers - £412 - bargain. you'd be able to sell it on ebay in a couple of years for about £9 i'm sure.

indeed.

'fing is, i had quite probably 3 or 4 of those albums in total between the ages of about 6 and 10 and with parents neither well off nor given to spending on frivolities i don't suppose i ever got much more than abuot halfway through an album [even with some pretty impressive sleight of hand that used to enable me to make two packs look an awful lot like one to the lady in my local newsagent's] but i did have a lot of fun with them nonetheless. best to indulge the hobby a little bit but not get out of hand, i suppose.

[The Gentleman Thug]

Don't the manufacturers always claim that stickers are produced in equal quantities?

Kenny Jacket. That's all I've got to say about football stickers. Kenny fucking Jacket.

[thechubbyone]

Just thinking about the random nature of packs of stickers, I once bought a Corinthians figure (big head things) at my newsagents. I'd already got all the Leeds ones, plus a few big stars from elsewhere, but I just couldn't get enough of those little guys. Imagine my upset when I bought a lucky dip one and discovered it to be Jim Magilton in his poxy Southampton kit. £2 of pocket money down the fucking drain! I didn't cry, but I wanted to.

[MightyWhite]

Is talking about stickers even sadder than collecting them?

When are the fixtures out anyway?

Thursday :exciteddancingmansmiley: