A few weeks ago, I put together a world cup prediction app — Set Piece Picks — and I’m opening it up to the BWRAO community for the tournament. This post is mostly just a walkthrough of how to get started, but I’ll say upfront: I built it to be simple, low-commitment, and as private as reasonably possible. No emails collected, no spam, no nonsense.
One thing worth flagging before we get into it — although I don’t collect email addresses, which keeps things pretty anonymous, it does come with a real
tradeoff: if you forget your password, I can’t reset it. There’s no recovery mechanism. Pick something you’ll remember. And for what it’s worth, passwords go through a one-way encryption process before they;re stored — I genuinely cannot see them even if I wanted to.
Getting started
Head to the site and find the “My Bracket” section. If you’re new, create an account with a username and password. If you’ve been here before, just log back in. No email verification, no confirmation link to hunt down in your spam folder.
Groups
You don’t need to join a group to participate — there’s a global leaderboard anyone can appear on — but groups are where it gets fun. Under the Groups tab you can either create one or join one.
I’ve already set up a BWRAO group for the community. To join, head to the Groups tab, enter invite code F3FNFQ and password FinoAllaFine, and you’re in. If you’ve already filled out your bracket, it’ll automatically be placed in the group. If you’ve yet to fill it out when you join, your bracket will be placed in the group upon saving. If you want to run a separate group with friends or family on top of that, creating one just asks for a name and password — you’ll get your own six-digit invite code to share. One bracket can be in as many groups as you want simultaneously.
Filling out your bracket
The bracket has two distinct sections. In the group stage, you’re picking the result (win, draw, or loss) and the exact score for every match. You get seven points for getting the result right and an additional 3 for nailing the exact scoreline — so 10 points total for a correct score, seven for just getting the result. Each round of the tournament is worth 720 points in total, so the group stage games are worth less individually (more games, same pool) while knockout rounds carry more weight per match.
Speaking of the knockouts — those are winner-only picks, no score needed. Point values start at 45 per game in the round of 32 and double each round through the final. Again, each round works out to 720 points total, which I think is a pretty elegant way to keep later rounds meaningful without making the group stage irrelevant.
Once you’ve filled everything out, save your bracket from the bottom of the screen. You can come back and edit it as many times as you want until 3 p.m. ET (UTC-6) on June 11 — kickoff of the first match — after which picks are locked.
Leaderboards
Under the Leaderboards tab you’ll find the global standings alongside a separate leaderboard for each group you’ve joined. One bracket, multiple competitions — so if you want to run something with your friend group alongside the BWRAO standings, both are right there.
The World Cup only comes around every four years, and this one — 48 teams, matches across the U.S., Canada and Mexico — feels like a particularly good one to have some skin in the game for. Come fill out a bracket, join the BWRAO group, and let’s see who actually knows what they’re doing. (I’m convinced it’s none of us — but at least someone will get bragging rights!)
