DAY 5 'SYNDICATED' REPORT

On a day on which 5 of the 8 matches were won by a top 16 seed backed by more than 75% of the entrants and one of the others was won by a player nobody had predicted would reach the L16 (Dent), the day revolved around the 'who'll implode first' battle between Monfils and Safin, which caused a lot of excitement on AM.com in particular before the high-seeded Frenchman finally came out on top, and most of all Flake v Berdbrain (one of the worst quality night matches I've seen for a long time), where the Czech player eventually caused an upset long after most people (including the fast-dwindling crowd) had given up caring.

For detailed results, etc, please see http://www.britishtennis.net/Competitions.html

TEAMS

TAT managed to hold onto 1st place for another day, which seems odd given that they do not have anybody in the individual top 10, until you realise that they have 11 players in the top 40! They would have dropped to 5th had Flake won, but being a predominantly American team, they've clearly had their fingers burnt backing him too many times and backed Berdbrain more than most.

It was a reasonable day for the predominantly British teams too, with Team CC, up 1 to 2nd, BT.net, up 2 to 3rd, and Rusedski.co.uk, up 2 to 4th, all gaining ground, mainly at the expense of the Ducklings, who dropped 4 to 6th.

As in R2, it was one of the teams near the bottom that top-scored on day 5, Tennisopolis.com rising 3 to 10th as a result - they swapped places with T4Y, who dropped 3 to last.

INDIVIDUALS

6/8 correct was not the highest score of the day but was enough to take one of the R2 winners, Claire Bear (AM) up 1 place and into the lead. Three players from the BT.net team are breathing down her neck - former leader Grundon (BT), up 2 to 2nd, & The Hoose (BT), up 14 to 3rd, both a point behind, with wolf (BT), up 3 to 4th, 2 points further back.

The rest of the top 10 are also 3 points off the lead, including Team CC players Big Al (CC) & sirfredperry (CC), both up 3 to 5=, highest-placed debutant djuky (VB), up 21 to 7th, Bruce (GR), up 2 to 8th, Daniel/Belgarath1981 (RF), up 23 to 9th, and Lana105 (IN), up 1 to 10th.

The biggest casualty from the end of R2 top 10 was Ollie361 (IN), down 29 from 1st to 30th after scoring just 4/8 on day 5, while 5/8 meant that trisco (CC), down 10 to 11th, TennisAnyone74 (TA), down 19 to 24th, and ptmcmahon (TA), down 20 to 26th, all lost their places in the top 10 too.

ON THE RISE

24 entrants equal top scored on day 5 with 7/8 (which generally meant they went for Berdbrain plus the top seeds in the other matches) with human yo-yo hfwardhouse (AM), up 85 to 102, and Team Berdbrain's sole member Portsey (TB), up 82 to 126th, the two fastest risers.

DODGY DROPPERS

She has a knack of dropping like a stone when the gorillas are in distress (as they currently are, miles adrift of the field) and SallyDaisy (JM) seems to have no intention of leaving them to go hungry this time, equal bottom scoring with just 2/8 correct and diving 171 places from 22nd to 193rd in her haste to come to their aid. Awww ...

GiulioAxe (RG), down 28 to 253rd, matched Sally's day 5 score and Craven91 (BT), down 113 to 217th, joined Sally in falling more than 100 places after getting 3/8 correct. In fact, you needed to score 6/8 on day 5 to be sure of moving up, though lower scores were sometimes enough for a rise for those who started out near the bottom.

QUOTES OF THE DAY

Monfils' ultimately fruitless attempt to roll over against Safin caused a fair bit of friendly banter on AM.com between those suffering from having backed either player, e.g. LadyTigress (IN)'s "Monfils just fell over! Come on, retire, Monfils, you know you want to!!!!" and ASE (AM)'s loosely relevant "If Monfils had bad flatulence, would it be a Gael force wind?"

beaujarkko (TA) summed up the massive gamble that would lead to TAT heading the table "I can't believe we've put our fate in this contest in the hands of Tommy Berdych, but we have."

Meanwhile, some successful members of the same team seem to have only just remembered that they entered the competition in the first place, e.g. Charlie02123 (TA)'s somewhat worrying Ooooooh! I just checked my individual results. I'm ranked 28th! What's even more exciting is that I'm actually down 12 spots. That means I was 16th!!! How come I didn't get no shout out, Steve-o? Don't act like what we had wasn't special! (any excuse for them to dig out that mendacious banner that they nicked from CC, it seems!) and mmmm8 (TA)'s "Oh, wow, I haven't been checking and missed the time when I was in top 5!!!"

Finally, relative newbie sirfredperry (CC) has found the competition to be less than condusive to marital harmony. "My wife is becoming increasingly suspicious about my intense relationship with BOTB."

MONDAY PICKS ANALYSIS / OoP / PREVIEW:

In all of Monday's matches except one, 95% or more of the entrants have their winner pick involved, the only exception being what could have been the match of the round, where the 77% who picked Numpty will be hoping that Troicki can take out Phau (who as a lucky loser, still counts towards points for those who picked Dammit) to limit the damage. (nickname guide)

SC/1 @ 16.00 BST: Potty 97% v Tipsy 1% (already out: Melzer 2%)
C1/1 @ 16.00 BST: Phau (in for Dammit) 21% v Troicki 1% (already out: Numpty 77%)
SC/2 @ nb 18 BST: Rafa 99% v Gil 0% (already out: Big Ivo 1%)
GC/3 @ nb 19 BST: Cilic 50% v Pics 49% (already out: Isner 1%)
GC/4 after MCvDF: Wawrinka 66% v Andreev 30% (already out: Seppi 3%, GGL 1%)
SC/3 @ c. 20 BST: Muzza 97% v Massu 0% (already out: Fish 3%)
GC/5 after SWvIA :Verdasco 93% v Floppy 2% (already out: Querrey 5%, Muller 1%)
SC/5 @ nb 00 BST: Gonzo 66% v Count Duckula 32% (already out: Kunitsyn 1%, Canas 1%)

The big swing matches (those likely to see the highest proportion of entrants making significant moves up or down the table) are Cilic v Pics (picked by 128 and 126 entrants respectively!), Stani v Igor (picked by about 2/3 and 1/3 respectively) and Gonzo v the Count (also picked 2:1), though the other matches could see huge movements either way for those who made the minority picks.

DAY 6 'SYNDICATED' REPORT

Three matches held the key to most of the big moves yesterday and Cilic (v Pics) & Andreev (v Stani) both contrived to lose from a set up. Only Count Duckula (v Gonzo) managed to hold onto an early lead in one of the matches where both players had been picked by at least 30%.

For detailed results, etc, please see http://www.britishtennis.net/Competitions.html

TEAMS

TAT dropped off the top for a while, but regained 1st place in the end as a result of having gone for the Count in a big way. MTF, up 3 to 2nd, also did well, but it was Tennisopolis, up 3 to 7th, who top-scored in R3. Team CC, down 1 to 3rd, lost a bit of ground but remain within a point of the leaders.

No team dropped more than 2 places, but a 2 place drop left the Dammitaires in last place as their hero's replacement Phau's luck finally ran out.

INDIVIDUALS

There is no doubt who the star of the day 6 was. Newbie P@t 0van (SK), up 46 to 1st, one of just two entrants who picked Troicki to get to the L16, managed to get all of the other results correct as well to get 8/8 on the day, giving him 14/16 correct for the round as a whole.

With 7/7 on day 6, TennisAnyone74 (TA), up 22 to 2nd, GoGo (AM), up 24 to 3rd, ended up a point behind the leader, as did nelslus (TA), up 25 to 4th, who equal top-scored for R3 with the leader, as did Cloudy (AM), up 24 to 8th, and Madame (TA), up 26 to 11th.

The other riser in the top 10 was Gaël (RG), up 25 to 6th with 7/8 on day 6 and 13/16 for R3 as a whole, while wolf (BT), down 1 to 5th, sirfredperry (CC), down 2 to 7th, yesterday's leader Claire Bear (AM), down 8 to 9th, and djuky (VB), down 3 to 10th, all dropped back a bit but remain in the top 10 and in a group of 9 players who are two points off the lead.

All of the top 25 plus Roberta the rankings bot (who has recovered from a dreadful R1 to do nearly as well as she did last year), are 4 points (one R4 win) or less behind the leader.

ON THE RISE

Even outside the top 10, a fair number of entrants got 7/8 correct on day 6, i.e. everyone but Troicki. Of these, the three highest risers (all up 70 places) were Michael (JM) in 78th, fightfan (TN) in 134th and Keith Nunn (AM) in 135th.

DODGY DROPPERS

The biggest faller of the day was chriSspotmen (RG), down 73 to 226th after getting 3/8 correct on day 6. However, the lowest scorer for R3 as a whole was SallyDaisy (JM), down 47 to 240th, with just 5/16, her mercy mission to rescue her friends the gorillas from starvation taking her from a fleeting appearance in the top 10 to the edge of the bottom 10 in just 3 days.

OUTLOOK

Amazingly, more than half of the entrants have all of their quarter-finalist picks still standing, so will have a direct interest in every match, though of course even if one of your quarter-finalists (e.g. Numpty) has already gone out, the less fancied player winning the match you had them playing will be good for damage limitation.

Everybody else has at least half of their quarter-finalists left apart from the unfortunate Lugburz (TY), up 5 to 232nd on day 6, who has just two still standing.

QUOTES OF THE DAY

World no. 1 Ashley Harkleroad's ***** (IN) (who seems to have had the same picks as me for the crunch matches) feared the worst before the day even started. "He elegido a Andreev, Stepanek y Cilic. Translation: GSM Wawrinka, Gonzo and Ferrer." Almost correct, unfortunately.

Fitz (JM) was not best pleased with one of his picks, "Might as well call Gonzo the muffin man. He should go sell food in the stands - would give a better performance. Argh!", while SuperBrat (CC) considered even more drastic action: "Cilic is out, so it's all over for me. Can't beleve he lost to that boring screamer Ferrer. Cilic's pic will now be deleted from my mobile phone." Oooer ...

WimbledonAce (CC) may be tempted to attend a meeting of pick 'em-oholics anonymous: "I know what you mean, I am verging on obsessed! Last night I had to keep ducking out of watching a film to check the scores, my boyf was not happy!" and finds that it's not only watching live scores that drives you mad: "I thought watching on the tele would be less stressful, back to the trusty scoreboard from now on!"

Meanwhile, someone who thought they had finally seen the light is sadly disillusioned, but SallyDaisy (JM) still manages one of the comments of the tournament so far: "Oh honestly, from 10th to 245th in 3 days ... and I really thought I'd got the hang of Pick'ems this time around."

TUESDAY'S MATCHES

All of R4 is due to be played today: For nickname help, see http://www.andymurray.com/forum/showthread.php?t=253

SC/1 @ 16.00 BST: Nole 77% v Berdbrain 2% (already out: Flake 13%, Gulbis 2%, Baggy 2%, Kohli 2%, Chardy 1%)
GC/1 @ 16.00 BST: Tsonga 75% v Simon 21% (already out: C'mawn 2%, Sod 2%)
GC/2 @ c. 18 BST: Muzza 83% v Troicki 0% (already out: Numpty 14%, Fish 2%, Phau 1%)
GC/3 @ nb 19 BST: Verdasco 75% v Count Duckula 7% (already out: Gonzo 15%, Querrey 2%)
SC/3 @ c. 20 BST: Duckboy 89% v Monfils 8% (already out: Haas 1%, Safin 1%, Ljubo 1%)
GC/4 @ c. 21 BST: Potty 70% v Pics 19% (already out: Cilic 11%)
SC/4 @ c. 22 BST: Fed 98% v Dent 0% (already out: Robredo 2%)
SC/6 @ nb 02 BST: Rafa 99% v Stani 1% (already out: nobody else picked)