Some tips on THAT Coral competition!

If you are on  Facebook, you can't have missed the current competition being run by Coral. The task is "simply" to pass  a football to your friends, for a chance to instantly win mini footballs, England shirts, stadium tours and the grand prize of a 50" TV.  But oh, what a lot of questions it has thrown up! So I'm going to try to answer some of them.

You can join in at www.facebook.com/coral using the "Pass it on" button at the top. When you share the competition on Facebook and Twitter, your friends can see it and click on your link, and if you see a post   that somebody else has made to Facebook or Twitter, you can click on it and accept the ball from them. This gives the person clicking on the link one entry into the competition. If it is a losing entry, a "Sorry you did not win" box pops up. Close this box and a second box pops up, asking you if you want to pass the ball back to them. Doing this returns  the ball to them which gives them chance to enter again, and counts as a pass towards moving up through the prize levels. You can only return a ball to each person once.

Until you have received 4 passes, you can win  a mini football.
Between 4 and 7 passes, a mini football or a football shirt
Between 7 and 10 passes, you could also win a stadium tour
over 10 passes and you could win the TV
You can win each type of prize once, and the comp continues until 5th July. The full terms and conditions are at http://www.coral.co.uk/pass/

So, say Mary has played the game and posted it on her timeline. Fred sees it, clicks on her link, doesn't win and passes it back to her. So they have both entered once, and Mary has one pass towards moving up the prize scale.
Now, Fred needs to share the competition because the only way Mary can pass the ball back to him, giving them both another entry, is to find where he shared it on his own timeline and click on that. They each get another entry, and now Fred too has a pass to add to his total.
Mary is under no obligation to return the ball to Fred, but if she does so it gets them each another go so it's worth doing. I'm trying to keep track of who has passed to me by going to their timelines straight away after I've received a pass. Unfortunately not everyone has shared the competition, so in some cases I haven't been able to return it.

By now, Fred and Mary have passed the ball to each other and can't do it again, so they each need to find new people to play with. They can do this by going to the timelines of all their friends and seeing if they have played yet.  If they have, they can click on their post to enter and return their pass as above. If they haven't played yet, they can go back to the app and share their own entry again, using the box at the top to tag friends who they think might like to join in.

You can share the game on your timeline as often as you like, and it's a good idea to do it at different times of day so that people will spot it when they drop in , but don't do it every few minutes or your friends will get fed up with you!

If you really want to have lots and lots of entries, you can search on Twitter for people to play against.  Use the hashtag #CoralPassItOn and you will see all the tweets from people who have used the Twitter share button. You can click on the links of people who are complete strangers to you, but remember they won't be able to find you and pass the ball back to you unless your Facebook profile is completely public, so you may only get one play rather then the two you would with a friend.

When you win, you will  receive a confirmation email - this won't necessarily arrive straight away. One of mine took 24 hours to arrive. But you must respond to it within 72 hours and you will need to include a scan of one of the following

• the photo page of your passport
• your birth certificate (note- if you have changed your name since birth, by marriage or for any other reason, you will also need to include a copy of your marriage license)
• a photo driving license
• your identity card, if you have one

While this security seems strict, it is necessary because Coral are a gambling company and could get into serious trouble if it was proved that somebody under age had won one of their competitiosn. But it has a bonus to protect us compers - anyone trying to cheat by having multiple Facebook accounts and passing the ball between them may appear to win, but won't be able to claim their prize, as a fake account will have no documentation to match the name on it.

Nice one, Coral! I wonder if it is a direction more promoters will take before awarding prizes?

I've had two wins so far, a football and a shirt, so I think my understanding of how the game works must be pretty close to the mark! So here's a summary of my tips

• share frequently without overdoing it
• tag people when sharing if you really want that person to return your pass
• remember to close the "Sorry" box if you've entered from somebody's link, so you can return their ball
• use Twitter to find more people to play with
• if you get passes from complete strangers, don't be alarmed - they've used Twitter to find YOU!
• you don't have to have a certain number of passes to win - it is completely random. But you do need at least 10 to have a chance of winning the TV.

Good luck and have fun!