I've been checking ESPN, Yahoo, Fox, Sporting News, and CBS for a "Bracket Style" game like we had last spring for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Can't find one, though.....

EDIT: JG found one

I found a free game at http://www.fanpool.com/

Let's see how it works:

GangsterBB
Corleone

i would be down for that. Somebody find one.

It's not a bracket style it's players if you want that.

I'm not going to play this one (yeah I'm a wuss) lol
http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/football/playoffs/basic/index.html?aff_origin=acctpage


Just wondering: why do we even need espn, etc... to do this.

We can just do it ourselves, everyone posts their picks and we can agree on a point value for each game and then whoever has the most points- I'll even nominate PLAW to run it :p

That's what I was thinking; we could run our own.

I asked on a few fantasy message boards if anyone knows of a game. If we don't find one by tomorrow, I'll be happy to commish one for us.

OK, fuck it. We'll do it ourselves.

Here we go...

WEEK 1

Pick a winner for each of these games:
(wins worth (TBD) points each)

Game 1- Jets at San Diego
Game 2- Denver at Indianapolis
Game 3- St. Louis at Seattle
Game 4- Minnesota at Green Bay

WEEK 2

Pick a winner for each of these games:
(wins worth (TBD) points each)

Game 5- Your Game 1 winner vs. Pittsburgh
Game 6- Your Game 2 winner vs. New England
Game 7- Your game 3 winner vs. Philadelphia
Game 8- Your game 4 winner vs. Atlanta

WEEK 3
Pick a winner for each of these games
(wins worth (TBD) points each)

Game 9- Your Game 5 winner vs. your Game 6 winner
Game 10- Your Game 7 winner vs. your Game 8 winner

Week 4 - Super Bowl
Pick a winner for this game
(win worth (TBD) points)

Your game 9 winner vs. your Game 10 winner.

***TBD is "to be determined". I'm open to discussion on how the point values for each round should go.

The only problem here is one of "security". Posting your entry last, after seeing everyone else's can be considered an advantage.

So what I'm gonna do is this.....

I'm going to PM my entry to JG by 5:30 EST today. Everyone else should wait until 6:00 PM EST today, and then PM their entries to me.

The deadline will be 8:00 AM EST on Saturday.

At that time, I will post everyone's entry, and JG can post mine.

Please give me feedback on a scoring system. I'm thinking as follows....

Week 1, one point for each win, total max points: 4
Week 2, two points for each win, total max points: 8
Week 3, six points for each win, total max points: 12
Super Bowl: 16 points

One more thing....

When you PM your entry to me, please copy the above format into the PM, so your entry looks like this:

WEEK 1

Pick a winner for each of these games:
(wins worth (TBD) points each)

Game 1- Jets at San Diego NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK
Game 2- Denver at Indianapolis NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK
Game 3- St. Louis at Seattle NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK
Game 4- Minnesota at Green Bay NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK


WEEK 2

Pick a winner for each of these games:
(wins worth (TBD) points each)

Game 5- Your Game 1 winner vs. Pittsburgh NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK
Game 6- Your Game 2 winner vs. New England NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK
Game 7- Your game 3 winner vs. Philadelphia NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK
Game 8- Your game 4 winner vs. Atlanta NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK

WEEK 3
Pick a winner for each of these games
(wins worth (TBD) points each)

Game 9- Your Game 5 winner vs. your Game 6 winner NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK
Game 10- Your Game 7 winner vs. your Game 8 winner NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK

Week 4 - Super Bowl
Pick a winner for this game
(win worth (TBD) points)

Your game 9 winner vs. your Game 10 winner.NAME OF TEAM YOU PICK

plaw- just so I have this correct. We are picking the ENTIRE bracket today, correct?

Plaw, put a tiebreaker in there (final combined score of the Superbowl perhaps?).

Your matchups are not correct.

You say that your Game 3 winner plays Phila. in Round 2. That is not true if Minnesota beats the Packers - than Minn. plays the Eagles. You can't be specific like that in laying out the future games.

Maybe you should only do one week and if you get the teams right only than can you use them for the next week. A bit more work but ...

And I think we should have WussBag DB be the Commish he would never do anything to compomise the outcome. Oh wait nevermind, let's stick with PL. :p

Someone's a little bitter, huh... :rolleyes: :p

Just a 'smidge' Paper Champion.

Not only do you abuse your power as commissioner - not only do you take my championship - my time in the Sun - but the topper is that you take my championship winnings - my $$$ - and you go and buy yourself a car. A brand new car - based on my hard work.

You have dragged the fine and good Bigelow family name into the mud. I can only hope that you sleep well at night. I now understand why everyone calls you DoucheBag ...

Hmmm....

Upon further review you appear to be correct. That's probably why none of the fantasy game sites are offering this game.

OK, guys. Hold off on PMing me your entries for now. Lemme mull this over for a while.

I hear mulling (mull, mull, mull). How about a tiebreaker like whose private part or which private part will be seen at half time at the Super Bowl? Honestly plaw, you're a noble man to take up the cause.....cause you just can't resist you-degenerate-fantasy-man-you.

Well.....

We could say that you can only pick from your times that are still leave from the preceding round in subsequent rounds.

In other words, if you pick the Jets to beat SD and you are correct, then you can pick between the Jets and their opponent in the next round.

But if SD wins, then you can only pick their opponent.

So the "penalty", if you will, for picking wrong is the loss of points and the decrease in options for who you can pick in the next round.

As you say, BD, a lot of work...keeping track of the score, who has which live live teams, making sure everyone understands the rules and doesn't pick any teams that they are not allowed to pick, etc.

Sorry, guys. I think I'll pass.

me too plaw- wayyyyy too much work for anyone to do.

I didn't know footballs playoffs were like that, I thought they were just like NCAA

Are we picking the entire bracket right now? Or are we just picking week 1?

Looks like we're not playing at all, unless someone else volunteers to run the game.

That's ok. I would've won anyway.

Well, that explains the PM I got!

I found a free game at http://www.fanpool.com/

Let's see how it works:

GangsterBB
Corleone

I s*ck with spreads but if JG is my competition then it really doesn't matter :p

btw JG- I think my name looks great on the top of the sports page

You suck with spreads, huh? Sorry. You're going down! Don't forget who won the regular season. :p

I'd imagine this game will be much closer, tho, as there are so few games...

and you played spreads in that game right????


I have to ask, how realistic were the spreads?

Plaw could answer that better than I could. I'm sure the spreads were standard, tho. I guess we'll see what you're made of! :p

I guess we will see what I'm made of then.


Your Bowl Mania Champion has spoken :p

The spreads were about right, give or take half a point here or there.

plaw- there was a football game where I worked where the idiots had "close games" 2.5 spread and "blowout games" 3.5-4.5 spreads. I won the first 2 weeks and they wouldn't allow me back in lol


How do they come up with the spreads?

That doesn't make much sense to me. The spread is about match-ups.

From what little I understand about it: The whole idea of the spread is to try to equalize the playing field for both teams. That is, a great team would have to cover a higher spread than a poor team -- the poor team would be "given" 6.5 or 9.5 or whatever "points" at the start. The half-point is to prevent ties. The spreads are created by bookies, to their advantage (of course).

Plaw?

JG- that's what I figured too. This is how the game worked:

You picked 6 winners. If you get all 6 right you win the prize split with however many others got all 6 right. If no one got 6 right it went to the next week.

I don't remember the teams but it was something like St. Louis Rams vs High School Football team- rams by 4.5

You had to ask?

You're gonna owe me big time for this one, cuz it ain't simple to explain.

Remember how I was talking about how if you bet with a sportsbook, you have to risk $11 for every $10 you want to win, regardless of which team you want to bet on?

That's how the "book" (legal or illegal) makes their profit, because the average bettor is unable to pick at the .524 rate necessary to break even.

But it's all dependent upon a point spread, or "line" that attracts an equal amount of action on each side.

Take the Denver-Indianapolis game this weekend. The line is what, 9 1/2?

But if Indianapolis was only, say, a 2 point favorite, it's reasonable to assume that virtually no one would bet on Denver. And if Indianapolis won, the bookmakers would sustain huge losses. Of course, if Denver wins, they would make a huge profit, but

a) It's unlikely that Denver will win the game, and
b) The bookmakers aren't looking to take the risk. They want their profit to be assured.

So experienced linemakers (today the lines emanate from the large Las Vegas sportsbooks. In the old days, guys like Casino character Ace Rothstein), people who know the history of how the public tends to bet, create a line designed to attract what they think will be an equal amount of action on each team.

Presumably, they're very good at what they do, since I haven't heard of any Las vegas sportsbooks going broke recently.

Now, ideally, the books will be perfectly in balance, with an equal amount wagered on each team.

So with everyone laying 11-10, the bookies can't lose.

Take in $1000 in bets on Team A, and $1000 on Team B. Whichever team wins, the bookie collects $1100 from the losers, and pays the winners only $1000.

Now, the larger the bookie, the less important it is that his books balance exactly.

At a big Las Vegas sportsbook, for example, if they take in $350,000 on Team A, but $370,000 on Team B, they still make a profit whichever team wins.

If Team A wins, they collect $407,000 from the backers of Team B ($370,000, plus $37,000 more because they are laying 11-10), and pay out $350,000 to the backers of Team A, for a $57,000 profit.

If team B wins, they collect $385,000 from the backers of Team A ($350,000, plus $35,000 more because they are laying 11-10), and pay out $370,000 to the backers of Team B, for a $15,000 profit.

So as long as a point spread is created which attracts roughly an equal amount of money on each side, the bookie can't lose.

But what, you might ask, does a small neighborhood illegal bookmaker do if his books don't balance, and he doesn't have the volume to make a profit whichever team wins as in the example above?

He simply takes the amount that he is "out of balance", and wagers it (called a "layoff") with a larger bookie. And if that wager puts the larger bookie too much out of balance, he wagers his excess with a bookie who is even larger.

Think of it as a pyramid. In the end, all the excess is "layed off" by the smaller bookies, thus insuring their profit, and at the top of the pyramid, the imbalance only affects the size of the profit, as in the example above with the bookie who is handling hundreds of thousands.

But again: The key point here is the experience of the linemakers in creating a pointspread that will attract roughly an equal amount of wagering on each side.