The first was inspired by White Lightning’s uncanny knack for predictions in both of the current Pro Pick’em leagues. The twist here is that the picks are against the spread, with no confidence points. I read in a magazine recently that you need to be able to pick better than 54% correct (depending on the vig) to actually come out ahead at the end of the season. Larry Grossman, host of the Radio Show You Can Bet on It has offered 2-1 odds, up to $1,000,000, to anyone who can predict 75% over 100 games. Maybe if someone does really well we’ll sponsor him in the challenge next year.
The second is, as the name indicates, a Survivor league. This one was inspired by Houston’s stunning upset of Miami in Week One, which had to screw up Survivor Leagues across the country, which often go for big money. The objective is to pick one team a week to win. Once you use that team it can’t be reused. The last one(s) left standing is/are the winner. I figure it will be tougher now that the early surprises are revealed. This one won’t take a lot of time, maybe a couple of minutes a week, but should be interesting.
I’ll try to come up with some interesting surprises for the winners, ala Munch’s autographed pic of Matt Schoebel (hey, I’m in Cincinnati, and a friend of mine was a neighbor of Neil Rackers for a while…) Sign up now if you’re interested, they’ll both start up this week.
Grrr the survival league lets you put an apostrophe in your team’s name… the pick’em doesn’t… my fantasy league does… and all three are on Yahoo. What the… never mind, I don’t want to know.
Three is the max for pickem. So unfortunately I don’t know if I can get in, since I’m in both current Doper leagues as well as the public pick set (and ranked 5th out of 210,000 :D). I guess I could make another yahoo ID… that is hard to resist.
75%? Let’s see. Through 4 weeks (that’s what, 60 games now?) I’m 38-22 vs. the spread. Damn. That’s not even close.
If it lets me join a third survivor league I’m in that as well. Survivor is fun. A lot of the interesting part is over already though. I’m already locked in a 1-on-1 in the league I’m in with my local friends after about 10 people dropped out in the first three weeks.
Well, White Lightning, I sure hope you can make it in; this one was really designed with you in mind. 63% is still very good.
As for the Survivor league, I just thought that it would be more challenging and less random after the fourth week. There will still be upsets, and there will be weeks like this one where the good teams play each other and the bad teams play each other, so it’s a little trickier (once your choices are whittled down) to find a true gem.
I have three Yahoo IDs, you could borrow one for picks if you want.
Sorry, but I need this thread available on Saturday when I make my picks. (I still need to create a new Yahoo ID for the 4th pool. Too much of a pain to do this far in advance of the pick deadline.)
LSD, there’s a place to check below the reply for email notification whenever the thread is replied to. I’ve never used it but it could be good for finding these threads. Or you could just bookmark it (add to favorites in IE).
Phelan, it is possible to create a new Yahoo ID and join more leagues. Not sure why they top out at 3, and I am in 2 Fantasy leagues, 3 Pick’em leagues and the 1 Survivor league with my one Yahoo ID.
Yeah, Yahoo allows 4 Fantasy teams per sport and 3 pickem sets per sport, per Yahoo ID. And at least 3 Survivor leagues per ID because I just joined this one.
I agree Shibb that it’s more predictable now – but with 4 weeks gone the strategy of choosing which teams to pick now and which to save loses some of its lustre, that’s all I mean. I’ve been picking mediocre teams that were locks to win for the last couple of weeks so that I’ll have the powerhouse teams left to pick in the endgame. Not to complain. This will be fun.
I’ll figure something out regarding the pickem vs. spread league. I guess I’ll just end up creating another ID.
I’ll be a bit more quick about it next year, just didn’t have any initiative for that at the beginning of the season. I’d love to do a Survivor league for money, maybe I can dig one up around here. A guy I know was in one for $25 per entry, with a one-time buy back in for $50. Almost everyone was knocked out in the first week.
Shib can you walk me through the process of signing up, I tried and couldn’t get in, I had the same proble last year. You can send me an e-mail if it’s too much to go into here.
Click on the radio button select for “Join a Private Group”.
Add the Group ID and Password (in our example, let’s sign up for the Point Spread League, so use ‘46886’ as the Group ID and ‘cecil’ as the password (don’t include the quotes).
The next screen will ask you for your Pick Set Name. This is the moniker the Group will use to distinguish us, like a username here. You can just use ‘Stuffy’, or do something more fancy. I think you can change this later if you don’t like what you put in.
Indicate the email address to use. This is the email that picks notifications would go to, or in a FFL it would send you notices about trade requests, etc.
There are several selections after that which I’m sure you can figure out on your own, but be careful about requesting free stuff, since that’s what spawns junkmail. Once you’ve made appropriate selections click on [CONTINUE] at the bottom of this screen.
The next screen allows you to review your selections. If you don’t like any of your choices you can click on your browsers back button to correct. Otherwise you can just click on the [Register my Pick Set!] button at the bottom of the screen, or [Cancel] as you deem appropriate.
If you clicked on the Register button then you’ll get another page echoing your selections and some choices along the bottom to go to Pro Pick’em Home (shows all Pro Pick’em leagues that you’re in), Group Page (which shows just this Group you’ve just registered for) or Enter Picks (which allows you to choose your picks right away).
That’s about it. I went through each step just in case there’s one you were missing, but I assume it was probably something early on and you’d have figured most of that out on your own. If you still have troubles with this drop me an email and I’ll see what I can do to help.
Thanks, it was the first step, I was using the group name rather than ID number. BTW, does my picks in this group effect my picks in public groups? They’re a bit different due to picking againts the spread.
