Castellan Systems

Project teams work hard but they also know how to have fun. Following sport and talking about the previous day’s results is one of the ways we have fun and release the stress of the project. Here at Castellan Systems it’s football, the round ball version. The boss was born in Spain, hence why football is our game; he grew up helping his father fill in the Quiniela every week.

“Quiniela” is the name of a Spanish game of chance based on La Liga. In the 1948 season, a 1X2 system was installed, whereby it is only forecast if the local team wins (1), the visitor wins (2) or the game is tied (X). Except for minor modifications such as the number of matches and what to do if the match is not held, the general rules of the Quiniela are still in that format today. This is the Quiniela that Michael remembers.

Quiniela is an application that helps run a tipping competition around major competitions like the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League, La Liga, English Premier League, NRL, AFL, NFL or MLB, just to name a few. And yes, we use a Microsoft Access database instead of something more industrial like SQL Server; if you're using Quiniela at your workplace, your DBA team may not be too keen for you to put this database in one of their nice SQL Servers. Most office workers have Microsoft Access installed and if not they can install the runtime which you can get by following the link in our Download page.

So what does Quiniela do?

Quiniela works with 5 types of competition formats:

• The FIFA World Cup style.
• The UEFA Champions League style.
• The European football league, like La Liga or the English Premier League, style.
• The Australian NRL style.
• The U.S. style.

Multiple tipping competitions can be run simultaneously. A dashboard screen assists navigating through these competitions.

"Quiniela" also comes with "Quiniela Tipster" included which can be freely circulated to all tipsters involved so that they can enter their tips directly and review progress.

Quiniela can define competitions of any of the 5 mentioned styles and customise their execution.

It can customise the look of the system for a competition by selecting images related to the competition.

It can define specific competition scoring rules, not only for the tipping but also for the match results.

If the competition type involves teams in groups, these can also be defined with their own unique names.

Quiniela allows the recording of match results tips for multiple tipsters and multiple competitions.

It records the match results and tracks the teams progress through each stage of the competition. For some competition types, it can then can determine the match-up in the next round.

It records points scored by each tipster based on the results of the matches and keeps a count of the number of correct tips for each tipsters which can be used as a form of tiebreaker when there are multiple tipsters on the same overall score.

It prints tipping sheets, tipping standings and other listings to help the tipster along the way.

It also has a simple sweep facility where teams are allocated randomly to each sweep player as a prediction of the final winner.

Quiniela maintains the teams that are taking part in the competition. You can record the group that they have drawn, their ranking by the governing body and load an emblem or flag to that represents the team.

It can record a match, including the date and time it will be played. Use your local date and time.

If the recorded date and time has passed, the date and time of the match can't be changed; this is to prevent possible covert manipulation of the tipping competition results. The Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) from the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) website in the U.S. is used instead of the date on the computer hosting Quiniela as this can be manually changed by a user, unlike the NIST website.

The teams can be selected from the pulldown menus or can be entered manually. This latter option can be used for recording later round matches that you know will be played but don’t actually know which teams will participate.

It can record which round this match is part of, i.e. Group Stage, Round of 16, Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals, Third Place Playoff or Final.

Finally, it can record the score once the match has been played. Once that is done Quiniela will update the teams’ standing, if it’s a Group Stage match. It will also check which tipsters got the result correctly and update their stats.

Quiniela record the participating tipsters and their match tips. The picks are recording using the traditional Quiniela system of “1X2”, as previously mentioned. Home team wins (1), the away wins (2) or if the game is tied (X).

This information is used to allocate points to the participating tipsters once match results are recorded. The points allocated for a correct pick in each round are customisable. Once a match has started, the tipsters' tips can't be changed.

The Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) from the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) website in the U.S. is used instead of the date on the computer hosting Quiniela as this can be manually changed by a user, unlike the NIST website.

These tips are now encrypted on the database to prevent any covert manipulation of this data once tipping is closed.

Quiniela allows for the viewing and monitoring of the group round standings.

It can print a sheet with this information.

Quiniela allows for the viewing and monitoring of the knockout rounds standings.

As mentioned earlier, Quiniela can set up for “Nations Cup” type competitions (i.e. competition with 1 game knockout rounds) or “Clubs Cup” type competition (i.e. competition with home & away knockout, except for the final, round).

It can print a sheet with this information.

Finally, Quiniela provides the facility for a simple sweep draw similar to those done in office for famous horse races.

The draw is performed by randomly drawing teams and allocating them to the participating tipsters; one check made is to make sure that they can be evenly divided among the tipsters.