Who won STAG Predictions at the Euros — and the vault final that broke everyone

One hundred and fourteen of you played STAG Predictions at the European Championships in Zagreb. You made 851 picks across eight finals, and between you banked 1,350 STAG Coins. Now that the boards have been archived, here is the full autopsy: who won, which calls the room got right, which one wrecked almost everybody, and the three medallists not a single person in the game saw coming.

THE PODIUM

IDKMAN123 wins it on 22 coins — the only board in the game to clear twenty. Six golds from eight finals, a pick that landed in all eight, and two long-shot bonuses on top. Behind that, a dead heat. dddg and Justin both finish on 19, and they got there by opposite routes: Justin hit five golds, dddg only three but caught more of the awkward silvers and bronzes.

Worth saying plainly: 100 of the 114 players landed a pick in all eight finals. The average board hit 7.46 of 8. This was not a field of lucky guesses — almost everyone who played knew what they were looking at.

THE VAULT FINAL BROKE EVERYONE

Five per cent. That is the share of vault picks that landed on a medallist, and it is by some distance the worst return of the eight. Ninety per cent of the room was on two men: Harry Hepworth took 51% of the picks and Artur Davtyan 39%. Neither of them medalled.

Four people had Chepurnyi. One person had Sol Scott. And nobody at all had Aleksei Usachev, who took silver. The Davtyan pick is the forgivable one — he is the defending champion who has owned this event for years. The Hepworth pick is the interesting one, and we will come back to it, because our own preview told you not to make it.

RINGS WAS THE SECOND TRAP

Only 33% of rings picks landed. The room went hard at Adem Asil (30% of picks) and Harry Hepworth (19%) — a combined half the field on two men who finished off the podium. Artur Avetisyan won it having been backed by five people out of 105. That is 4.8%, which slipped in just under the 5% long-shot threshold, so all five banked an extra coin for it. Eleftherios Petrounias was the room's saving grace: 22% of players had him, and his bronze is most of the reason rings paid out at all.

THE THREE NOBODY SAW

Three medallists went completely unpicked across 851 picks: Sweden, team bronze. Every single team pick in the game was on Russia (47%) or Great Britain (46%) — a genuine coin flip that Britain won — with a scattering on Germany, Switzerland and Ukraine. Sweden on the podium was not on anyone's board. Aleksei Usachev, vault silver. Zero picks. Savelii Sieedin, high bar bronze. Zero picks, in a final where 69% of the room correctly took Joe Fraser for gold. There is a pattern in those three: they are all the third name in a final where the top two were obvious. When you are picking one athlete per final, the bronze is where the value hides, and almost nobody plays for it.

WHAT THE ROOM GOT RIGHT

It was not all carnage. Six of the eight finals paid out at 74% or better.

The floor final is the quiet triumph of the week. The room spread itself across the three men who actually filled the podium and 92% of picks paid. The two biggest consensus calls both came off: three quarters of you had Illia Kovtun on parallel bars, and seven in ten had Joe Fraser on high bar. Both won. A favourite winning pays the least in this game — but it pays.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE BIT

We published a form guide for this competition eleven days before it started. It projected every final off our scores database, filtered to the official Zagreb entry list. It named five of the eight eventual gold medallists: Targhetta on pommel, Fraser on high bar, Kovtun on parallel bars (jointly with Fraser, the two of them projected level) — and, yes, Avetisyan on rings and Chepurnyi on vault. The two finals that destroyed the room were the two our own preview got right. On vault it went further than the name. It said in as many words that the vault final is two vaults averaged, that the single-vault board misleads you, and it ranked Chepurnyi first on a 14.716 two-vault average with Davtyan second and Hepworth third. Ninety per cent of you picked the two men it had behind him. We are not saying this to gloat — the same preview had Russia for the team title and Joe Fraser to win the all-around, and got both wrong. But if you played on vibes and lost a final by 46 percentage points of consensus, the form guide was right there.

THE LONG-SHOT BONUS BARELY FIRED

Thirteen coins. That is the entire long-shot payout for the championships. The rule pays an extra coin to anyone whose pick medals when 5% or less of the room was on it. Five picks in the whole competition qualified: Avetisyan on rings (4.8%), Chepurnyi on vault (3.8%), Ferhat Arican's parallel bars silver (1.9%), Sol Scott's vault bronze (0.9%) and Daniel Marinov's all-around bronze (0.9%). That is the rule working as designed, but it is also a reminder of what it rewards. Backing the favourite is safe and nearly free. The coins sit with the person willing to be the only one in the room on a name.

THE BOARDS ARE NOW ARCHIVED

Zagreb has moved into Past Events on the predictions page. The podiums, your picks and what you scored are all still there to read — it has just stopped taking up room at the top. And the next one is already open. The Mediterranean Games men's artistic competition runs 31 August to 2 September in Grottaglie, and the board is live now: eight finals, sixty-three gymnasts from seventeen nations, picks locking at 2pm Taranto time on qualification day. There is a form guide for that one too, filtered to the actual entry list. On the evidence of vault, it is worth ten minutes of your time.