We are a tennis forum with a community feel.
TAT was formed in 2004 as a place for tennis fans to discuss the sport in a friendly and civil manner. While tennis is the main focus of TAT, we welcome discussion on other subjects.
We also offer our members and visitors exclusive content, such as tennis articles, commentary, and news feeds. In December 2006, we launched a new feature called TAT ProTalk, featuring a Q&As with players and other tennis personalities. In just a few months, we have already secured contributions from many players, including (but not limited to!) Vania King, Mardy Fish, and Lisa Raymond.
One of the main draws of TAT are the many contests we host. The biggest of these are the original TAT Suicide Pools. The SP's are hosted each Grand Slam tournament. When the first Suicide Pool was played during the 2005 Australian Open, 15 contestants participated. Today, hundreds of contestants from all over the world vie against each other to win.
Here, in short, is how the SP works: Suicide pools are a very simple concept that test your ability not only to pick a winner, but to project your winner through the ups and downs of a draw. For each day of play, you have to pick 1 -- yes, just one -- winner each from the Men's and Women's draw. That is out of all the matches played that day.
The catch is, once you pick someone, you cannot choose them again for the rest of the tournament. So you really don't want to pick a Federer to win in early matches.
To survive in the suicide pool and "beat the draw," you will have to have gone through 14 successive days of picking a winner. Sure it may sound easy, but as you get deeper into the draws, you have to start picking based on not only who you think will win, but who is likely to lose down the road.
Men's and Women's Draws are played separately. So if you lose on the men's side but are still alive on the women's, you continue playing the Women's draw.
You have to be a registered member at TAT (registration is free and really quick) in order to play. The contest will start as soon as the Order of Play for Day 1 -- Sunday, May 27th -- comes out. Because the French Open is one day longer than other Slams, you will be able to choose your Day 1 pick from
either Sunday or Monday matches. So, entrance into the contest is open until play starts at Roland Garros on Monday, May 28.
Pete and TAT are teaming up to offer a special contest for TennisWorld readers. In addition to participating in the general TAT contest, we will track rankings for TennisWorld players on TennisWorld. The players from TW who go furthest in each draw (men's and women's) will get prizes from TAT and Pete/Tennis Magazine! All you have to do is type "TW" in the posts of your day 1 picks on TAT and look for TW result trackings during TW's daily RG crisis center entries.
Please check us out at www.TalkAboutTennis.com to learn more about TAT or the Suicide Pool. If you have any questions, you can always ask at TAT. Or ask below, as we'll be checking this thread out and answering them.
Thanks!
Mariya
TAT Administrator
SITE PROGRAMMING NOTICE
This week, due to anticipated heavy traffic, we will be offering daily entries. They will be as follows and in order:
Monday Net Post
Hamburg Crisis Center 5/15
Wednesday Racket
Hamburg Crisis Center 5/17
The OTher Thread
Hamburg Crisis Center 5/19
Hamburg Crisis Center 5/20
It is requested that these entries are only to be used for discussions concerning tennis and related match calls.
To help accomplish this, we have created an entry specifically for "anything-else" OT chat (dogs/cricket/soccer/Tiger Beat discussions/other entertainment, etc.), called The Locker Room.
Thanks for your understanding, as TW deals with the spring clay traffic as best as we can.
HAMBURG - ORDER OF PLAY - MAY 16, 2007
