Incredibly, this technically starts tomorrow!
We don't enter until the 4th Round (which is now in 'back' in its traditional January slot), but the draw for the opening stages is being held tomorrow at Hampden. Davie Moyes drawing out teams he'll never have heard of!

Interestingly, no 'first time' winner has retained the trophy since the 1870s.

To my knowledge, this seasons competition will have the most ever clubs with 92. And with 2 preliminary rounds scheduled, there are effectively 10 rounds of competition - again a record.
In the old North of Scotland Qualifying Cup, if I remember, the 16 Highland League teams had to win two games to reach the semi-finals, and qualification to the Scottish Cup.
Then (the Scottish Cup) had 4 rounds before the quarter-finals...so a total of 9 matches to win the whole thing! (sometimes even a bye in Round 1 was a possibility).

But this season's marathon means that when we enter, 5 of the 10 rounds will already have been played, and 60 of the 92 clubs will have been eliminated!

The 2 preliminary rounds are drawn tomorrow with the Scottish Amateur Cup winners involved for the first time - apparently a team called Harestanes from Kirkintilloch who play on a public park!

Replay dates:
(Tuesday 16th Feb - 19:45)
Hibernian v Hearts
Kilmarnock v Rangers

(Tuesday 23rd Feb - 19:45)
Dundee v Dumbarton

The quarter-finals are still currently on 5th March at 3pm - but some of the ties will 'move' for TV...but no news yet!
I imagine the BBC/SKY are awaiting the outcome of the replays.

Quarter-finals (currently 5th March - 15:00):
Celtic v Morton
Hibernian or Hearts v Inverness Caley Thistle (holders!)
Kilmarnock or Rangers v Dundee or Dumbarton
Ross County v Dundee United

How many ties would be televised? No doubt both games involving the OF teams would be candidates and I would have thought our match would probably be slightly more preferable to broadcast than Ro$$ County v Dundee United if the BBC or Sky can show a third match between them.

22 minutes ago, RiG said:

How many ties would be televised? No doubt both games involving the OF teams would be candidates and I would have thought our match would probably be slightly more preferable to broadcast than Ro$$ County v Dundee United if the BBC or Sky can show a third match between them.

I genuinely feel our tie - (regardless whether it's Hibs or Hearts) is more 'worthy' of TV coverage than Celtic v Morton.
A Kilmarnock v Dundee tie wouldn't be favoured, but Rangers v Dundee - a cert!
It'll probably be two ties from the 4 games being televised and switched from the 'traditional' 3pm Saturday kick-off.
A lot of 'probably' and 'feel' from me there - I really haven't answered your question, RiG!!

Sometimes I think football was better without live televised matches.  I know it is a lifesaver revenue stream to many clubs, and I must admit I enjoy seeing ICT on the box if it is a game I can't get to (like against Aberdeen next Monday).

But for long distance supporters it can be a real pain.  In this instance (and many others) I cannot make any travel plans probably for another week (after the replays) when the TV companies decide who they want to cover.  Every day that passes flight costs increase and flight availability diminishes. Even parking charges at airports can increase the nearer to the flight date one books.  Apart from the cost there can be other problems like getting a match ticket posted out in time  if there is only a few days to do it in.

It was all a lot easier when you knew the match was going to be at 3pm on a Saturday.  Ah, the good old days!

1 hour ago, RiG said:

How many ties would be televised? No doubt both games involving the OF teams would be candidates and I would have thought our match would probably be slightly more preferable to broadcast than Ro$$ County v Dundee United if the BBC or Sky can show a third match between them.

...Despite what the media might lead you to believe, Rangers aren't through yet!

1 hour ago, PerfICT said:

...Despite what the media might lead you to believe, Rangers aren't through yet!

And we are unlikely to know which ties are televised until that game has been put to bed. I reckon that if Rangers go through then its Rangersand Celtic matches for TV. If Killie win then its Celtic and ICT

If our game was to be picked for TV it would almost certainly be moved to a Sunday KO as the police would be unlikely to allow both OF sides, should 'Rangers' get through, to play on the same day.

The TV games have tended to be Saturday lunchtime, Sunday lunchtime and Sunday afternoon so Rangers and Celtic would likely be split across two days and our match, if picked for TV, would be bumped to the Sunday.

Complete guesswork really but I think that seems quite feasible.

6 hours ago, Caley Mad In Berks said:

Sometimes I think football was better without live televised matches. !

I think that all the time, not just sometimes.

12 minutes ago, TheMantis said:

I think that all the time, not just sometimes.

Spot on Mantis, there is no banter when you are watching TV

Yeah!  I guess so...but if it was nor for T V I would have been unable to watch last year's Scottish Cup Final--a thrill never to be repeated.

Well I don't want to watch it on TV and I want to be there. But with travel, etc. to be arranged the delay in a formal announcement is feckin annoying.

The SFA should compel the TV companies to select their matches within 48 hours of the draw and just take their chance with replays. As wellas fans being able to make travel arrangements it might spread the TV money about a bit more evenly.

52 minutes ago, Kingsmills said:

The SFA should compel the TV companies to select their matches within 48 hours of the draw and just take their chance with replays. As wellas fans being able to make travel arrangements it might spread the TV money about a bit more evenly.

I agree, but if that were part of the deal then I imagine the TV companies would not be paying as much.  Swings and roundabouts or a gun to the SFA's heads, whichever way you want to look at it.

On 8 February 2016 at 1:53 PM, Sneckboy said:

Celtic don't get drawn at home very much!
If they are away AGAIN it'll be the most remarkable of statistical anomalies. But, as always, 50/50 !
However, it's already is bizarre...18 away ties in the last 20 - of ties that could be home/away in the Scottish Cup.
One would have to toss a series of 20 coins literally thousands of times to produce a 18/2 differential. Pascal's triangle!
I'm not for a moment saying it's rigged against Celtic, but, if it was anyone else, that suspicion would be widely cast.

 

Pascal's Triangle would take you hours  Working it out by Binomial Distribution gives you a probability (for 18 away games out of 20) of 0.000181 to 3 sig figs, or 0.02%. 

Putting it another way, you would expect this to happen 2 times out of 10000.

That's precisely the figure I got, Mantis.
My table is rounding to 1 decimal place, so the 0.02 shows as 0.0% here.

On ‎08‎/‎02‎/‎2016 at 4:27 PM, Charles Bannerman said:

 (190/2 to the power 20)

Agreed. The quoted expression comes to the number Mantis has produced. If you have 20 cup draws resulting in home or away, then each and every possible sequence of 20 H/A permutations will have an equal probability of materialising - ie 1/(2 to the power 20). In the case of two homes and 18 aways, there are 190 - ie (20 x 19)/2 - different places in the sequence where you could have your "homes" and hence 190 different versions of it. This will be equivalent to the binomial solution Mantis refers to and I could also take an intuitive guess that the third term in the relevant line of Pascal's Triangle will have the number 190 as its coefficient - ie 190 x (0.5 to the power 18) x (0.5 squared). Sneckboy's table appears to reflect (to 1 dp) the relative values of the Pascal coefficients when expressed as percentages of their total value.

Edited February 13, 20169 yr by Charles Bannerman

 I agree!  

5 minutes ago, CaleyMax said:

 I agree!  

You agree with Charles, Sneckboy agrees with me and Charles agrees with himself 

26 minutes ago, TheMantis said:

You agree with Charles, Sneckboy agrees with me and Charles agrees with himself 

We'll put that one down to my inability to manage the "quote" function on here and I couldn't work out how to quote both Mantis and myself! Similarly I can't work out how to quote the above and also Mantis' suggestion that  Pascal's triangle would take hours to work out that far, but based on Sneckboy's table, the largest (11th) Pascal coefficient (for 10 homes and 10 aways) would be in the region of 184,750!

1 hour ago, Sneckboy said:

That's precisely the figure I got, Mantis.
My table is rounding to 1 decimal place, so the 0.02 shows as 0.0% here.

That seems complicated, they way I figure it all options are 50/50. They will either happen or they won't.

2 hours ago, TheMantis said:

Pascal's Triangle would take you hours  Working it out by Binomial Distribution gives you a probability (for 18 away games out of 20) of 0.000181 to 3 sig figs, or 0.02%. 

Putting it another way, you would expect this to happen 2 times out of 10000.

I guess there's no Celtic supporter who can do the maths or they would have been whinging even more loudly about how unlucky they have been with the draws in recent years.

Gabby: I can see how you think that - due to there always being an equal chance of a 'head' or a 'tail' with each individual spin.
And yes, it is 50:50 for each spin....but, over a series of spins, the odds change to take-into-account all possible outcomes.

A short example to show this is - using just 2 random draws:
Assuming,
Home = Heads = H
Travelling = Tails = T

All possibilities are:
H-H = 1 in 4 chance (25%)
H-T = 1 in 4 chance (25%)
T-H = 1 in 4 chance (25%)
T-T = 1 in 4 chance (25%)

All outcomes are equally likely, a 1 in 4 chance (25%)

In 2 random draws, you would expect to get 1 home and 1 away (in any order). And indeed, that would happen most often - on average 50% of the time (the middle two 'options' from above).
However, there's the also chance of both being at Home for both ties (25%)
...or requiring to Travel for both ties (25%).

In essence, regardless of how many draws are conducted, the 50/50 split of Home and Away ties will always be the most frequent outcome - but its percentage likelihood reduces as the number of draws increases.
There's obviously far more chance of getting an 'even split' in 2 draws than in 1000 draws (500 heads and 500 tails).
As in the 'Celtic example', over 20 draws, a 10-10 split only has a 17.6% chance of happening - but is still the most likely outcome!

Fekkin mathematicians.

Charles, click on quote for the first post you want to quote then click on quote in the next etc.

2 hours ago, Alex MacLeod said:

Fekkin mathematicians.

Charles, click on quote for the first post you want to quote then click on quote in the next etc.

 I'm actually a Chemist (you know what I mean.... if it moves, it's Biology, if it smells it's Chemistry and if it doesn't work - it's Physics!) which is probably worse but also a confirmed technophobe who had thought that the second click would just cancel out the first one

1 minute ago, Charles Bannerman said:

 I'm actually a Chemist (you know what I mean.... if it moves, it's Biology, if it smells it's Chemistry and if it doesn't work - it's Physics!) which is probably worse but also a confirmed technophobe who had thought that the second click would just cancel out the first one

I knew that. Was TiC