Well, this time it was Recoil, just barely ahead of MirrorVerse. Getting pretty crowded up there at the front end, folks.
It sure is. We have four stories over 1,000 votes, two more entering the top half of the 900s.
MirrorVerse is leading the pack, having been knocked back a peg by Recoil. It's currently on-track to be the first story to win at +1,300 votes, and is unlikely to get delayed again -- projected margin is 120+.
Wyvern is next in line, both for winning by a 120-vote margin and for passing 1,300 votes.
By the end of the year we'll probably reach Vote 89, where
NSW is projected to win by a 30-ish margin. The next two after that are reasonably solid:
Really Bad End is slated to win Vote 90 and
Alea Iacta Est is odds-on favorite for Vote 91, both by a 100+ margin.
Things are less certain with Vote 92, which might go to
Meet the Heberts... but only by 10 votes. And considering that it's nearly a month out, things could certainly swing against it by then. If it manages to pull through, then
Trump Card is the most-likely followup, winning Vote 93 by a margin of 40+.
The rest of this round of predictions are also in low-to-mid margins.
All Alone projected to win Vote 94 by a 24-vote margin,
Danny & Taylor projected to win Vote 95 by a 56-vote margin, and
Recoil might come around for another pass in Vote 96, with a 19-vote margin. Those are all pretty far out, however; a difference of just a few votes here or there might tip the balance and shift things around by the time we get to those rounds.
Past Vote 96, estimated rounds-to-win are as follow:
Alea Iacta Est: 6
All Alone: 24
Bait & Switch: 25
Confrontation II: 1
Danny & Taylor: 35
Hostage Situation: 8
I, Panacea: 2
Junior Hero: 6
Meet the Heberts: 16
MirrorVerse: 14
NSW: 16
Nemesis: 13
One More Trigger: 9
Really Bad End: 43
Recoil: 10
Security!: 4
Slippery Slope: 2
Trump Card: 9
War Games: 4
Wyvern: 4
Again, that's counting from Vote 96, which is estimated to take place on the 1st of February, 2016.
Accuracy on predictions for this round was 96.23% overall, with an average difference in predicted vs actual of 18 votes. Most accurate was
Really Bad End, which came in exactly on-target: 0 votes off, 100% accurate. Least accurate was a split;
Security! was furthest off proportionally, at only 79.51% accurate.
Slippery Slope was furthest off in raw vote count; it earned a whopping
61 votes more than anticipated, nearly
doubling its average vote intake over the last ten rounds. If it can keep that up, it'll join the ranks of the most rapidly-updating stories in Ack's lineup -- those 5-6 stories that routinely bring in 100+ votes every time and update like clockwork.
And, as always, my vote:
[X] Meet the Heberts - 6
[X] NSW - 5
[X] Security! - 4
[X] War Games - 3
[X] One More Trigger - 2
[X] Recoil - 1