About Gabbattoir

Gabbattoir is a social Test Match prediction game.

Players compete against friends and strangers across the globe to predict what will happen in a Test series, one day at a time.

The principle is simple: before the start of each day's play, you submit a prediction for the end-of-day score. At stumps, points are awarded according to the accuracy of your prediction.

And in between, you experience the full force of Gabbattoir's emotional rollercoaster – wild swings from hope to despair; from ecstasy to desolation.

Read on to learn more about Gabbattoir's laws, including the thrill of a first-day GAMBLE, the puzzle of when to predict NO PLAY, and the subtleties of the End Game Gambit (EGG). Will yours be Boiled, Scrambled, Broken, or Rotten?

All participants automatically enter the Open Competition, in which four Gabbattoir Trophies are contested across each Test series:

In addition to the Open Competition, players may also create or join invitational groups, where friends (or enemies) compete privately under the same trophy structure. You may belong to as many groups as you wish, but you submit only one prediction per day, which applies to all groups simultaneously.

Trophies are retained forever in your digital trophy cabinet – a permanent record of your Gabbattoir glories. And for the winners of the Open Competition, there are tangible, real-life prizes too: the physical Gabbattoir Trophies, dispatched to their new owners by the post after the series.

For each series, the prediction window opens 48 hours before the coin toss on the first day of the first Test. Thereafter, daily predictions may be made any time after the close of the previous day's play.

Predictions may be submitted or edited until exactly one hour before the coin toss on the first day, or an hour before play on subsequent days. When the prediction window closes, your most recent entry becomes binding.

To avoid the prying eyes of other members of your group, you may choose to cloak your prediction so it remains hidden. Cloaked predictions can be revealed ('uncloaked') at any point during play. Any predictions still hidden at stumps are automatically revealed.

If you believe an entire day will be lost to weather (or some other cricket-stopping eventuality), you may predict NO PLAY. Your pessimism will be rewarded with bonus points if correct.

Because either team might bat first, Day 1 of each Test carries a special privilege.

On Day 1 only, you may choose to submit TWO alternative predictions, one for each possible batting side. For example, in a Test between Australia and England, you might offer:

Alternatively, you may decide to offer only one prediction for the first day. This is known as a GAMBLE.

• Guess correctly which team bats first (a GOOD GAMBLE) and your score for the day is doubled.
• Guess wrong (a BAD GAMBLE) and you score zero.

Honed over a decade of competitive prediction by its founders, Gabbattoir's unique scoring algorithm is at once scrupulously fair and devilishly capricious; scientifically precise and shrouded in mystery; elegant in its simplicity and bafflingly complex.

In essence, the game awards points for predictions that accurately capture the spirit of a day's play. The closer your prediction lies to the day's actual events, the more you can expect to be rewarded. Your daily score will usually comprise three different calculations:

Players may also be awarded bonus points. Other than successful NO PLAY predictions as described above, these points hinge on predictions about the end of each Test.

Gabbattoir's unique End Game Gambit (EGG) mechanism offers additional rewards and punishments for predicting when and how a match will finish.

A correct call — known as laying a Boiled EGG — earns a handsome bonus.

But get it wrong and you may find yourself facing one of the following:

• Scrambled EGG — Match ends, but you called the wrong result.
• Broken EGG — You said it would end today; it didn't.
• Rotten EGG — You said it wouldn't end today; it did.

In the mythically rare event that a player correctly predicts a tied match, they are said to have laid a Poached EGG — a feat rewarded with an eye-wateringly large haul of bonus points. In the history of Gabbattoir to date, no player has yet laid a Poached EGG.

Needless to say, Gabbattoir's algorithm may change at any time, and if you're unhappy with your score there's very little you can do about it (though you never know – you could try emailing us with feedback).

No prediction means no points. But don't despair if you miss a day: it won't affect your average score. Indeed, players chasing the Nate Salver have been known occasionally to avoid predicting on a tricky day altogether so as to avoid damaging their average.

Gabbattoir works best as a shared obsession. It was never meant to be played in isolation, but in the company of fellow sufferers. Players are encouraged to form small, self-governing communities — WhatsApp groups, Discord servers, daily conference calls, or whatever alternative setting they prefer — in which daily GAMBLEs, uncloaks, and EGG-related disasters can be pored over in real time.

Measured sledging is not merely tolerated but considered part of the ecosystem. The etiquette is simple: be witty, be sporting, and remember that everyone's predictions generally look worse in hindsight.

At its best, Gabbattoir is not about perfection, but participation: the shared, daily act of attempting to foresee the unfathomable – together, and usually wrongly.

A final word of warning. It is probably unwise to schedule major professional commitments during a live Gabbattoir series. Prediction fever is real, and poorly understood. Symptoms include compulsive statistical analysis, ruinous subscription costs for increasingly sophisticated weather forecasting apps, and generalised neglect of a startlingly wide range of domestic and work-related obligations. Participation is at your own risk.